Podium & Points for Meyrick & his team-mates in Paul Ricard puts M-sport Bentley top of the Pro Cup

edited by Rob Allender

After an exciting six-hour race, Andy Meyrick and the Bentley Team M-Sport crew concluded a hard-fought race with a podium finish at the third round of the Blancpain Endurance Series at the 1000 km of Paul Ricard, France.  The number 7 Bentley Continental GT3 of British trio of Meyrick, Guy Smith and Steven Kane took on the challenge for the series and battled it out on track in an eventful and exciting race to bring the car home in 2nd place.  With 61 cars competing on-track at Circuit Paul Ricard, Meyrick took on second stint duties taking over from teammate Smith who took the car up to fourth after starting the race in P5 after qualifying on Saturday morning. With a focus on a podium finish and setting about the task at hand, Meyrick took the car up to third place whilst battling it out with the Team VDS BMW driven by the highly experienced Lucas Lohr, in what comentator John Watson descibed as the best session he'd ever seen Andy race! Andy successfully reduced the gap to just 2 seconds behind the BMW before handing over to Steven Kane in third to complete the last session. With great pit work from the team and some exciting racing that got the car to just 1.6 seconds off the winning Bob Neville run Nissan GT Academy RJN Team  Nissan GT-R in the final stages, the car was finally brought over the line in P2 and firmly at the top of the Teams Championship for the first time this season, and in second place in the Drivers Championship by one point.   “We had a fantastic race,” said Meyrick. The team did a great job – the set-up of the car was just right which meant it ran consistently throughout. Guy had another great start which set us up nicely to stay close to the Nissan and eventual race winner. I enjoyed some close racing with the BMW during my middle stint before handing the car over to Steven who took the battle to the end; and a podium finish. With a real boost to our season I am now really looking forward to Spa where I hope we can increase our points haul and championship lead.”  

Andy then headed to Belgium for the official 24-hours of Spa test session on the 24th June before going to Goodwood Festival of Speed to drive the Continental GT3 car up the hill. Race duties will resume for the Total 24-Hours of Spa on 25-26 July.  

Postscript - fellow Welsh racerJulian Westwood failed to finish with the AM Cup Team Parker Racing Audi R8 LMS Ultra

Pro Cup

Race results available in full at www.blancpain-gt-series.com

http://www.blancpain-gt-series.com/endurance/calendar

Calendar  2015 Blancpain Endurance Series

Round 4 23/ 26 July 2015 Total 24 Hours of Spa

Round 4  19-20 September Nurburgring 1000K