Chad Racing – Brno FIA GT3, Rounds 3 & 4

After showing great pace at the opening rounds at Silverstone earlier in the month, Diego Alessi and Giacomo Petrobelli took the #87 Chad Racing Ferrari to the Czech Republic for the second meeting of the season. But while the Ferrari’s reliability – and more specifically its gearbox – improved markedly, the drivers’ fortunes didn’t.

The two Italian drivers would be joined in the Chad garages and on the grid by a second Ferrari Scuderia (a new car, making it four in the team stable) and by two drivers new to the series.

Charlie Hollings and Damien Charveriat come to GT racing from backgrounds in single-seater racing and also SPEED Series, where the two have raced together for some time. Charlie has known Piers Masarati for a number of years and, when the decision was made to explore new avenues in sportscar racing, it was to Chad Racing that they turned; the deal being signed after Silverstone, when it became apparent that the Ferrari was going to be a competitive proposition.

Damien had actually raced in the opening FIA GT3 round at Silverstone, in a last-minute deal that saw him aboard a Team S-Berg BMW Alpina, but numerous problems severely restricted his running over the weekend.

But while the deal is for all of the remaining races this year, the timing of it meant that the duo would arrive at Brno with no testing and without even having sat in the car. In fact, neither had driven a Ferrari before and neither had been to Brno before, so an interesting weekend awaited. But while it was a step into the unknown in many ways, the aim was to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

Friday saw two one-hour free practice sessions, the first of which saw both cars down at the lower end of the timing screen as all four drivers got settled in. The second session, however, gave a taste of what was to come when the #87 Scuderia ended the 60 minutes with a second-fastest 2:02.365.

Damien and Charlie were still in the 2:06s – quite understandably, as this was their first experience of car and track. Charlie in particular was finding that he would have to make some quite significant changes to his (single-seater) driving style, as he was carrying too much speed into the corners.

Qualifying followed first thing on Saturday morning, with two 20-minute sessions. First up would be Giacomo and Damien, and they would be venturing out in dry conditions but with the track still drying out following overnight rain.
By the end of it, the #87 had completed seven laps and the #88 eight, with Giacomo setting a seventh-fastest 2:02.102 and Damien a 22nd fastest 2:04.495. But the encouraging thing was that the Frenchman’s time was almost two seconds faster than his previous best and indicated that he was getting to grips with the car.

In the second qualifying session, both Diego and Charlie – as expected – were about two seconds faster than their teammates; but while for Charlie this meant that he would also be starting from the 11th row, Diego’s time of 1:59.910 – as well as being the only sub-two minute lap of the whole weekend – was good enough for the ultimate starting position; pole!
In fact, so dominant had the #87 been that it led the times for most of the session and Diego had parked up and was on the pitwall watching when the chequered flag was waved.

This obviously had the effect of giving the team a huge boost going into the first race of the weekend later that day, but the conditions at the start of the race would be pivotal in determining the fortunes of both cars that afternoon.

As the cars assembled on the grid, the track was dry; but further round the track, it was absolutely pouring down and all teams were presented with a dilemma – wet or dry?

The drivers had already done a lap on their way to the grid, and some were convinced that wets were the only way to go. Others decided that it was still worth gambling on slicks in the hope that conditions would soon improve. For Chad, the decision was wets for #87 – after seeing all the cars ahead on the grid (save for the second-placed Alpina) make the change to cut-rubber – but slicks for #88; Charlie deciding that it was worth taking the risk as they were so far back to begin with.

The rain was still falling as the race began, but the safety car led the way for the first two laps before freeing the pack. Alas for Damien, the rain had by now intensified and was falling across the whole circuit; and he would be one of several drivers forced to make a very early stop to change to wets. This would effectively turn the rest of the 60 minutes into a test session.
Things were initially going better for Giacomo in the #87, and he had gained a place as the race went green when the slick-shod Alpina instantly began to slither down the order.

But even though the Ferrari was on the correct tyres, the set-up was for dry conditions, as there hadn’t been enough time to change them. This meant that the car was very stiff on the wet track and was making life difficult for its driver. He was unable to defend his sixth place for long and both the #25 Lamborghini and the #18 Corvette went by on lap seven.

This left Giacomo having to defend from the #2 Hexis Aston Martin of Luc Paillard; but as he rounded the left-hand Turn 11 for the eighth time, the back end broke away and the car spun. Fortunately, contact was avoided, but a lot of ground had been lost; he was still in tenth, but some way adrift of the cars ahead.

Giacomo pitted on lap 11 end Diego took over.

With so much ground to make up, all he could do was knuckle down to the task in hand; but by lap 21 he was having one of those déjà vu moments, as he came up on to the tail of the #25 Argo Lamborghini – the same car that had so forcibly prevented him from taking third in the first race at Silverstone. But while Ellen Lohr had been in the car on that occasion, now it contained Giorgio Sanna, and the defending was less robust; Diego taking ninth soon afterwards.
But while he was able to then close up on the Audi of Johannes Stuck, the clock ran out before he could find a way past and he had to settle for ninth.

Charlie Hollings took over from Damien and completed the race, but the extra stop had already cost them a lap and it was simple a case of getting some racing mileage under the belt. The car ultimately finished in 26th place; a most frustrating debut. Nevertheless, Damien had shown good pace in the wet and a lot had been learned by both drivers in such challenging conditions.
Race two took place the following morning and thankfully the teams would not be faced with gambling on tyres as the weather was markedly more accommodating; dry and sunny, but cool, being the order of the day.

This time there was a conventional rolling start and it was the #87 Chad Ferrari that reached the first corner in the lead after Diego timed things to perfection. The #16 Graff Racing Corvette of Mike Parisy slotted into second place behind him, with the #1 Hexis Aston third and the #9 S-Berg BMW fourth. Further back, though, the Ford GT had had a big coming together with a Porsche at the first corner and the two cars ended up stuck in the gravel. This would prompt a safety car period to allow the damaged cars to be recovered.

Three full laps were completed at SC pace before the race went green again. Once again Diego Alessi got the start absolutely right and he led the field round the first corner; and all cars made it round the first corner safely.

The Chad driver almost immediately found himself defending his lead from the Graff Corvette (the winner of Saturday’s race), but even so the two cars began to pull away from the battle for third, which was similarly intense.

Charlie Hollings, in the #88 car, managed to avoid the opening lap melee, but was now at the tail end of a long string of cars that stretched from seventh to 18th place with barely a gap between any of them; and try as he might he couldn’t make headway.

Back at the front it looked as though the Corvette was the quicker of the two cars, but the Italian was driving superbly and didn’t for a moment look as though he would yield his first place. Things had changed behind the lead pairing by the time the pit window was open and the Hexis car was beginning to close on them.

The battle for the lead continued apace as the pits got busier and busier – Charlie handing the #88 over to Damien Charveriat midway through the window – but it wasn’t until the last opportunity that Diego ended his excellent stint and he led the top five in en masse.

But as the Chad crew got to work, the #87’s race was about to go disastrously wrong.

The newly installed Giacomo Petrobelli was the first of the front-runners to leave his pit and initially it looked as though the team had done an excellent job; the car taking to the track with a lead of several seconds. The driver put his foot down and maintained his advantage as his pursuers fought amongst themselves for second.

However, after just three laps, and with 20 minutes of the race remaining, the timing screen flashed up the message, “Stop/Go Number 55”.

It transpired that a mistake by the engineer timing the stop had seen the car released four seconds too early, and this would be the length of time that the car would have to be stationary for. This was bad enough in itself, but a second stop/go was immediately issued – this time for the car stopping in the fast lane after the engineer realised his mistake.

Giacomo took his penalties on consecutive laps but was now right out of the reckoning; whether the car would have won was debatable – the Graff Corvette was beginning to close on the Chad car before the penalties were awarded – but it is almost certain that a podium finish had just been lost. The car’s driver continued to show pace in the remainder of the race, but there was no coming back from such a deficit in the available time and it finished in 15th.

Damien’s race ended in the gravel after a late spin, but he had again shown pace in the #88.

After such a disappointing day, it would be easy to focus on what went wrong rather than what went right; but a lot did go right. The Ferrari’s pace was self-evident and all four drivers showed great pace all weekend. The team will learn from its mistake during the stop and the two new drivers will both have learned a great deal from driving in such eventful races.

The next rounds take place at Jarama in Spain later in June, with the team stopping to test at Albacete en-route; and Chad will be more determined than ever to turn the Ferrari’s potential into serious championship points.