GTWC R5 – Barcelona, End of an era

GTWC R5 - Barcelona, End of an Era

The final race of the BMW M6 for David and the Walkenhorst team. Another tricky weekend was predicted with the high downforce set up required for the Barcelona circuit and the extreme tyre degradation also making it a challenge for the team and drivers to make the car competitive.

Friday testing went as expected with the engineers and drivers working hard to bring the car into some sort of window to make the car as competitive as possible.

“On new tyres the car was there or there abouts, as we really use the tyre for traction around the long corners at Barcelona, but as expected with the M6, the degradation hurt us and the deg is extremely high at this track”

After X3 podiums in a row in the SRO Esports championship, David was now in P2 for the championship and hoping to end the Esports season on a high as well. Working hard again with BMW Esport team G2 Esports and coach Nils, David was also up against the other cars with slightly better characteristics and also success ballast from the previous round.

David qualified the car P13, having not hooked up a decent lap in the Qualifying server conditions. However this doesn’t seem to matter to David anymore as another mega start saw him make, 7 positions in the first 3 corners to put him with the front pack and start to pull away from the midfield. David set the 3rd fastest lap early on in the race and made up 1 position in the first stint before boxing early to undercut P2, once again nailed the pitstop and exited the pits in P2 which he would hold unchallenged until the end of the race, cementing P2 in the Esports championship.

David set the fastest BMW M6 time in all the sessions on Sunday morning, which on average put the car P18. Electing not to start for a change, Jake Dennis would start the race holding position in the first hour, while managing a throttle issue, before handing over to David. David would again, hold position throughout the stint before the tyres started to drop off and he was on the backfoot. David also had to switch off and switch on the car after the throttle issue stopped the car from working for a few seconds, before David was able to finish his stint. Nick Yelloly would bring the car home P22 to finish the season.

“We knew Barca would be tough for us, but I was determined to make the most of the situation, so to qualify with the fastest M6 time, set the fastest race lap and fastest 10lap stint average time of the team, and secure P2 in the Esports championship with another podium was a job well done for me personally. The throttle issue really didn’t help our overall pace but we managed the issue and got the car to the end”