Ahmad Al Harthy says confidence is high at the Oman Racing Team ahead of qualifying for today’s opening round of the Blancpain Endurance Series at Monza in Italy, following a fault-free day of practice on Saturday, 11th April.
Sharing driving duties with British racers Jonny Adam and Daniel Lloyd in the No.44 Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3, Ahmad and his team-mates worked through a variety of set-up changes to fully fine-tune the car ahead of this morning’s all-important qualifying session.
Getting Saturday’s track action at Monza off to a near-perfect start, the Oman Racing Team entry ended the opening test session with the second fastest time – just 0.3 seconds shy of the outright pace – and went on to enjoy a consistent run in the subsequent free practice to finish in the top 12.
For pre-qualifying, the squad focused on getting the handling of the car absolutely right for Sunday’s grid determining session and 33-year-old Ahmad is sure the excellent preparations will pay dividends when qualifying begins at 09.00 (local time) this morning.
Round one of the season, a three-hour contest, will then follow at 14.30 (local time) where the team will be aiming to score as many points as possible to get the Blancpain Endurance season off to a suitably strong beginning.
“Everything went very well today, like clockwork to be honest”, said the Oman Air, Oman Ministry of Sports Affairs, Ooredoo, National Bank of Oman and Al Hashar Group supported racer, “In terms of our pace, everything is looking very strong for qualifying and we should have a very competitive race car too.
“It’s going to be an exciting race with 60 cars on the grid, but also very, very busy on track so we need to maintain our focus and try and make sure we can qualify as high up the order as possible. I really am looking forward to it, the mood in the team is really high and we’ve done exactly what was needed so far.”
Live online streaming of final qualifying and race one of the Blancpain Endurance Series season will be carried here: www.blancpain-gt-series.com/endurance/live
