An incredible result for Calan Williams, Ahmad Al Harty, Javier Sagrera and Century Motorsport in Monza for Round 2 of the GTWC.
The weekend started in a challenging fashion with mysterious car issues which were impacting the car performance. The team had worked late into the night Satruday to check everything, though it would be impossible to know if any of this had fixed the issue until qualifying actually started.
Thankfully, once qualifying commenced the issue had disappeared.
Ahmad qualified first and delivered a strong lap time, as did Javier, Calan completed the 3rd qualifying stint and achieved a strong 1:46.4 in his session. When all of their times were combined they would start the race from P8 in the Bronze class (of 18) and P47 overall (of 58).
Strategically, the team decided to start the race with Calan, a move away from the traditional plan of finishing the race with the Pro driver.
The start of the race was horrific with an enormous incident into turn 1 - the type of thing Monza is known for with the long run down into the sharp chicane which actually turns back on itself. 10 cars were taken out and thankfully Calan was able to make his way through the chaos, not only making up the positions of the cars out of the race, but also a further 10 in addition to this through the opening lap prior to the inevitable safety car.
After that he continued an amazing drive with great pace to have gained an unbelievable 36 positions to be P3 in class and P11 overall when he handed the car over to Ahmad during a FCY (Full Course Yellow). This was even better in reality, as they had done so with an extra pitstop than 9 of the cars ahead - so in effect they were theoretically running P2 overall at that time.
Ahmad then showed great pace and further cemented the position of the car. As a result the team gained even further strategic advantage into the 3rd hour.
When Javier went into the car they were running P5 in class as a result of the stop, but still holding the advantage of a full pit stop on many ahead, so as long as the race stayed green for around 15 mins, the result was heading for 3rd or even 2nd in class.
Cruelly, 1 min before it would have made no difference, a car hitting the barrier caused another FCY which allowed all the cars ahead that were behind a pit stop to recover that back without cost. After working so hard to earn that advantage, this was very unfortunate, but the focus returned to Javier doing his best to make up the positions from our now P5 again on the restart for the 2 - 3 laps which would be remaining.
Incredibly another turn 1 crash accident 1 lap into the restart put them back into P3, which whilst unfortunate for those involved, delivered back the result which the performance of Calan, Ahmad, Javier and team had earned through their performance through the race.
In the end, a dramatic weekend and a strong result which was a massive turnaround from the night before after the practices sessions.
Next event is the big one of the year, the Crowdstrike 24 Hours of Spa!
