22 May | Chris finishes 9th in Bucharest

Described by Chris as “A fabulous venue with stunning buildings and friendly atmosphere”, this beautiful yet unforgiving street circuit was attended by 78 000 spectators and is remiscinant of the Monaco circuit used by Formula One.
Unlike Monaco though, the track is lined with solid concrete walls and tricky bumps are ever present, so maximum concentration is needed at all times – understandable given that on the main straights the cars are doing 120mph.

For any driver in the GT3 series, Bucharest presents a unique challenge.

The fact that GT3 has never before visited Bucharest, means all the drivers shared the same difficulties. But for Chris Hyman of the Kessel racing team, there was an added challenge; not only is he a newcomer to the circuit, but also to the series itself, and this weekend was his first in the Kessel Racing Ferrari F430. The car itself is quite different to that of the Porsche Chris raced at Silverstone two weeks ago. It is a mid-engined vehicle with a different style of driving needed to get the most from every corner. It also uses “paddle-shift” gear changing, instead of the conventional gear stick. Add to these factors a damp track throughout practice, qualifying and race sessions, and what you have is a very steep learning curve.

Of course Chris is no stranger to challenges, and by the end of qualifying he had beaten his practice times by over 16 seconds!
With just 2 practice sessions on the Friday, Chris had to essentially learn everything from scratch. The first session resulted in a 1min. 43 sec lap time, while in the second Chris posted a time of 1min. 32.10sec – an 11 second improvement. All things considered this was a good step in the right direction, although further improvements would be needed to be truly competitive. With this in mind, Chris put in extra effort and stayed with his engineers into the evening to work on ways of improving car and racing line alike.
This effort paid off when in the qualifying session on Saturday morning, Chris posted a very competitive lap time of 1min. 27 sec.

For race 1 in the afternoon, amid a very wet and chaotic track, Chris’ team mate Paul Warren started 38th on the grid, and by the time he came into the pits for the driver change, had got up to 26th position – having overtaken 12 cars.

By this stage, the Ferrari had unfortunately lost 2nd gear, and Chris had no choice but to adapt his driving accordingly, all the while managing to keep his car away from the walls just inches away, and pointed in the right direction. During his half hour stint, Chris’ Ferrari suddenly lost 3rd gear, forcing him to take immediate action to keep from crashing. This resulted in having to go down an escape road, and turn the car around which cost time. Keeping his concentration and patience, Chris raced on and even managed to overtake a further 3 cars, resulting in a 23rd place finish, and a very respectable lap time of 1.min 26.4sec – a lap time amongst those of the front runners!


But the best was yet to come – during race 2 on Sunday...

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