Former British Formula Renault Champion Adam Christodoulou is celebrating his back-to-back wins at the Nurburgring and Silverstone at races over the past two weekends.
On the 18th May Christodoulou flew to the famous German circuit for the motorsport classicthe Nurburgring 24 Hoursa packed out race with two hundred cars racing, eight hundred drivers, and 200,000 spectators.
Having competed as part of Bonk Motorsports team in the same race in 2011, Christo was now reunited with them once more, and aiming for success in their BMW M3 GT4.
Sharing the car with Adam over the 24 hour period were teammates Andreas Montman (Germany), Jens Moetefindt (Germany), Kiki Sak Nana (Thailand) and things were looking up when the team managed to qualify second in their class, with an average speed of 163.393Kph.
Conditions were dry to start with, but as midnight approached the weather deteriorated so badly that the race was stopped and the teams were instructed to return to the pit lane until conditions improved. The break gave the crew some precious low-pressure time to work on the car, and catch a few hours sleep before the race was able to resume, a full nine hours later.
Eventually, a puncture damaged the cars good progress. A similar catastrophe at the same race last year nearly forced Christo to retire, so it was a relief to the team when it turned out to be easily repairable.
The BMW eventually passed the chequered flag in third place, however victory was later handed back to Adams team when it was discovered that there had been illegal modifications made to the two cars ahead. The win marked an outright 24 hours race victory for Christodoulou; the second in his career and the first since he secured the top spot on the podium in at Barcelona 24 hours last year.
And it proved to be a stepping stone to a similar victorious result back on home soil only one week later at the Silverstone British GT.
This was Christodoulous debut performance at this event, which was perhaps surprising bearing in mind his four years of experience behind the wheel of GT cars, racing at events all over the world.
The grid was a mix of fifty cars and racers included the British GT Championship contenders as well as drivers in the first round of the European GT4 Championship. That meant both GT3 and GT4 cars on track, and for this race, Christo was at the wheel of a Porsche GT4, a race seat shared with German teammate Joerg Viebahn.
The offer to join the race had arrived at a fairly late stage, however Adam was now set to re-join Germanys Team Pro Sport for the weekend. The Nurburgring 24 hour race the previous weekend had proved problematic for the team when the car was involved in a severe crash and was left beyond repair. The replacement car had arrived mid-week but difficulty with the engine control unit delayed their departure from Germany to Silverstone, and when the team eventually arrived they had missed the majority of the first session.
Despite the unlucky turn of events, qualifying went satisfactorily, but a last minute surge by some of the other cars had placed the car in fifth position on the grid.
The race was the Silverstone 500 - a three hour race with three compulsory pit stops. A chaotic start put Adam in the centre of a real dog fight for position. By the end of the first lap he had managed to clamber into third, but with rising track temperature the tyres were beginning to suffer already.
An incident on track caused a safety car deployment, but the team chose to stay out which eventually allowed them to move up into second place after the restart. A second safety car appeared just as the pit window opened which gave a perfect opportunity to slip back to the garage during the slow laps for a driver change. It also played into their favour, and by the time they had returned to the track, the car was now in first place.
Tyre degradation began to get worse, and the team was now being hotly pursued by an orange BMW; it became apparent that this could be a fight to the finish.
Both cars entered the pits at the same time, but despite a near faultless pit stop, the BMW got the steal on the position and it made it very close on the exit. However Jorge was relentless and fought hard to get past the orange menace on the out lap - securing first place once more and managing to hold out all the way to the finish line. A tremendous second victory for Christodoulou in the span of a week.
Having also been the first round of the European GT4 Championship, this also leaves Adams team at the top of the championship rankings, and the next opportunity the team will have to compete in this series will be at Assen in The Netherlands in two weekends time.
In the meanwhile, Christo already has his next race lined up, and will be back at Silverstone for round two of the Blancpain Endurance series this weekend.
