The Circuit Paul Ricard 1000km race has been a happy hunting ground for Garage 59. In 2016 the team took the outright race victory. Then, between 2018 and 2020 the team enjoyed a hat trick of class wins at this popular endurance event.
This Saturday’s race provides the perfect opportunity for the GT World Challenge Europe teams to have an endurance run ahead of the blue riband Total 24 Hours of Spa later on this summer.
For Garage 59 it's a return to the scene of the team and driver’s Pro-Am endurance championship wins in 2020, which were secured with a race win for the #188 Aston Martin Vantage. At the 2020 event, Alexander West and Chris Goodwin shared the winning #188 Vantage with Marvin Kirchhöfer as Jonny Adam had a clashing commitment. This time around Jonny is back and he’s looking forward to the big race, especially after the #188 crew’s win at the season opener in Monza.
“It was great to get the endurance season underway with a win at Monza,” said Adam. “The pressure is on now to do it all again at Ricard and with the team’s history here we would really like to keep that run going. There’s no reason why we can’t win it. Garage 59 is a slick team, the car is proven and we know the driver line-up works well so we will do what we always do: 100% effort from the moment we arrive until the chequered flag on Saturday night!”
In the #159 Aston Martin Vantage, Valentin Hasse-Clot, Nicolai Kjærgaard and Alex MacDowall will be looking to turn the pace they showed at the previous endurance round at Monza into a podium finish at Ricard.
“I’m really looking forward to a longer race which runs into darkness,” said MacDowall. “We had strong pace at Monza and we know Paul Ricard should suit the car a lot better. We have been looking into a lot of ways to extract more performance out of the car and hopefully this will show and give us a good chance of a podium this weekend.”
This event will also include a one-hour Esports race. A top three result scores real-world championship points for the Silver class competitors and this time Nicolai Kjærgaard will be jumping into the simulator for the virtual reality race on Saturday lunchtime.
The Circuit Paul Ricard 1000kms will get underway at 18:00 CEST / 17:00 BST on Saturday 29 May. The race will run for six hours with sunset falling at around the halfway mark. You can catch all of the action on the ‘GT World’ YouTube channel.