James Townsend and Joe Wheeler finished fourth in the GT4 Pro-Am category for the team from Maldon, Essex, aboard their Aston Martin Vantage GT4, both drivers performing superbly on what was their most competitive showing of the season.
Arriving at Spa brought back happy memories for the Fox team of an overall British GT win in 2022 and a class victory at the 12-hour race four years earlier, though neither was achieved in the 30-degree temperatures that greeted the drivers in Friday testing.
Building speed through the single session on Friday, and in Saturday’s pair of practice sessions, James and Joe combined to start third in Pro-Am; Kent-based racer James then showing superb form to run there throughout the opening stint
Unfortunately, his hopes of progressing even higher up the order were thwarted by a pair of Full-Course-Yellow (FCY) periods, which froze the race order for significant portions of time.
A slow pitstop – a legacy of a malfunctioning electronic pitlane timing device – cost the #40 Aston Martin 20 seconds to its rivals and meant that Joe was sixth in Pro-Am when he rejoined the track.
To make matters worse, that time loss put Joe into a group of cars that were picked up by the Safety Car – which had just entered the circuit following an earlier on-track incident. This had the effect of trapping the Clitheroe racer almost a lap behind many of his rivals.
The order for the ‘unlapped’ drivers – including Joe – to pass the Safety Car was given too late to allow the group he was a part of to circulate and join the back of the main pack, and meant that when green-flag racing resumed, there was a 90-second gap between the two groups of racing cars.
With only 25 minutes to go, this gap proved insurmountable, but Joe knuckled down, set a string of fast laps, and climbed to fourth in class by the finish.
That result means he and James hold fifth spot in the Pro-Am points at what is now the halfway point of the season. The next event is a double-header event at Snetterton, Norfolk, on August 15-16.
James Townsend: “I think we missed an opportunity to be right up there in the results, thanks to just not executing the weekend as well as we should have. I was really pleased with my qualifying performance, given I haven’t been to Spa for eight years, and it was really good to be able to keep a load of the Am drivers behind and pass a couple of Silvers before the pitstops. Without the issue with the pit timer, we don’t get caught in the group of cars that lost the best part of a lap behind the safety car, and I reckon Joe had enough speed to put us on the GT4 podium overall, let alone in Pro-Am; that’s how good the car felt. I wasn’t convinced by the format of running with all the French GT4 and Alpine Cup cars to begin with and the experience wasn’t great, so I hope we don’t do that again.”
Joe Wheeler: “I was really pleased with the pace we had, which is why it’s a shame we didn’t add to our podium at Oulton Park. James’s speed was great when you consider he hadn’t been here since 2018, but we had an issue with the electronic pit timer so we lost 20 seconds at the pitstop and all his good work was undone. That then dropped us in the group of cars that the Safety Car picked up and basically lost a lap to the top GT4 cars, so to recover fourth from there is the best we could have hoped for. The good thing is that our speed is good, so we can be really optimistic for Snetterton.”
Paul McNeilly, Team Principal: “It’s been a really mixed weekend. Both drivers were excellent behind the wheel. James’ qualifying performance and his race stint were flawless while Joe was really fast and consistently so. I think without the safety car splitting the pack and a little less FCY running, we’d have been on the podium without a doubt. Those little factors, like our electronic pit timer not working as it should have, resultant pitstop time loss and the fact that we came out in the group that lost almost a lap behind the safety car, have cost us such a strong result, but knowing the speed is there gives us lots of confidence for Snetterton and beyond.”
