Welsh drivers have contasting fortunes in the iRacing.com GT500 race at the Nürburgring!

Westwood seals AM Class title triumph - Andy Meyrick & Bentley battle hard to 2nd place in the Pro Class! by Rob & Marion Allender

Veteran Cardiff racer Julian Westwood & his team-mate Ian Loggie sealed  the Class AM Drivers title by a single point, after a hard fought race in the final round in the 2015 Blancpain Endurance Series! (Unfortunately Team Parker missed out on the AM Team title, finishing 2nd by only 2 points!)  After the race, before heading off for some serious celebrations, Julian summed up 'The race weekend was the usual mixed bag of weather, but the race was dry. Starting in 35^th place out of a 50 car grid had it problems, as we had to rely on the team radio to tell us when the race had started, as we were still hadn’t  got on to the pit straight, when the front of the grid had crossed the line and started racing!  The first part of the race was ok, we were where we needed to be, 3^rd in Class ahead of Jürgen Häring, and Frank Schmickler in the Attempto Racing Porsche 997, but when we did our first pit stop, the Porsche was a bit quicker, and got out ahead of us, but that still wasn’t a problem. On the next pit-stop, with a safety car in prospect,  my team-mate Ian loggie pitted at the same time as the Porsche, but we lost 7 or 8 seconds to them!  I think that must have got them in front of the safety car, because we can’t work out how we then lost 30 or 40 seconds to them, and another place!  We were then 4^th and they were 2^nd in class. However we worked hard and when they dropped back to 3^rd place we were in the right place, but on the closing laps, as I was being lapped, the pit-crew didn’t warn me the 2^nd car behind the leader was in our class, and he nipped by! So we got what we needed by finishing 5^th, but it was a bit tighter than we anticipated!'

  (The AM class Team Award was won by Anthony Pons, & Fabien Barthez in a Akka ASP Ferrari 458 Italia.

Akka ASP who entered 3 cars, won the Team award by 2 points from Team Parker Racing)

Jools (as they call Julian) is the Race Engineer for Team Parkers Porsche Cup Cars and he’s been an integral part of the team for 10 years now, and the team affirmed it was nice to see him get back behind the steering wheel and help bring us success in the Blancpain. Westwood’s racing career stretched all the way from Formula Ford in the late 1980s, into Formula 3000, (The top series of it’s day), winning the Raymond Mays Trophy for the Drive of the Year at Donington in 1991, and went on to win the 1997 Vauxhall Vectra Championship, and had other notable success, before hanging up his helmet when he joined Team Parker. So he is now relishing his return to racing with his team-mate Ian Loggie ‘Ian owns the car and we’ve had a mixed season, up until Spa. We should have won our class in 2 of the 3 races but Spa went a lot better. It was amazing, we were up to 7^th overall at one stage!

2015 Blancpain Endurance Series

AM Cup Class Teams  Standings after 5 of 5 rounds  1st Akka ASP  83 points,  2nd Team Parker Racing  81 points,  3^rd Attempto Racing  80 points.

AM Class Drivers’ Standings 1st Ian Loggie  and  Julian Westwood  81 pts 2nd Jürgen Häring  80pts

Photo by Rob Allender

Meanwhile in Pro Cup section the Bentley M-Sport  fought hard, with Guy Smith and Andy Meyrick, putting their team-mate Steven Kane, in with a shout of a race win! Kane was then involved in mighty duel with the Nissan GT-R run by Bob Neville's RJN GT Academy Team, (see Jann Mardenbough, etc), passing once and then having to give the place back, before finally making the pass stick! In the meantime, the race winner, the Von Ryan Racing McLaren 650 had slipped away to win with a 14 second lead, leaving Andy and his team-mates to take Second place on the podium and Second place in the Team & Drivers standings, just 4 points away from becoming Champions! Andy commented after wards "It's been another fantastic season with Bentley Motorsport and it was great to be challenging for the championship win for the second year in a row. It was just out of reach this year but the team is in a very strong place going into next season."

Pro Cup Team Class Standings after 5 of 5 rounds

1^st Belgian Audi Club Team WRT 79 points 2^nd  Bentley M-Sport 76 points 3^rd Nissan GT Academy Team RJN 68 points

^{Website address : www.bentleymotorsport.com  Twitter account : @BentleyComms  Facebook: www.facebook.com/bentleymotors}

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