AND OMAN RACING TEAM
Avon Tyres British GT Championship front-runner Ahmad Al Harthy and team-mate Daniel Lloyd will begin the first two-hour race of the season at Rockingham later today, Sunday, 3rd May, from third on the grid after a very competitive and evenly matched performance in qualifying.
With just 0.1 seconds the difference between the Oman Racing Team drivers in their respective qualifying sessions on Saturday afternoon, the No.2 Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3 ended the run with a combined best of 2m47.811 seconds.
Ahmad lapped during the first of the two 10-minute sessions and was a mere 0.050 seconds away from ending the run with the fastest time at that point, his best lap of 1m23.964 seconds (87.89mph) placing him second on the timesheets in the Oman Air, Oman Ministry of Sports Affairs, Ooredoo, National Bank of Oman and Al Hashar Group backed car.
During Lloyd’s run, the Briton posted a quickest time of 1m23.847 seconds (88.01mph) to go ninth fastest in his session. While the duo has to run with a significant amount of added weight as part of the championship’s balance of performance regulations, big strides since the season-opening event last month mean Ahmad is much more confident going into this weekend’s race.
“I’m really happy with my qualifying lap”, said the Omani, “We believe we have a strong set-up for the race so we worked on the car for qualifying to try and get as much performance as we could and I’m very happy to be third on the grid – it’s a very respectable position to start from. The weight we have to carry does hurt us still, but we’re in better shape than we were at the first round.”
Round three of the season, which begins at 13.25 (UK time) later today and will be screened live on Motors TV, is the first two-hour race of the British GT season and therefore carries with it increased importance in terms of the championship points.
As the duration is double that of the opening two races of the campaign, 150% points will be earned. After a challenging start to the season four weeks ago Ahmad is determined to make the most of the extra points on offer to try and get his and Lloyd’s championship fully on track.
“We’re confident for the race, we’re starting near the front where we need to and Dan and I know what we have to do”, added Ahmad, “Whatever the weather does we’re ready for it, we want to score as many points as we can so we need to be consistent and to stay out of trouble.”
