Gstaad Auto Club establishes serious racing credentials

 

Way back when we began this website, GL.com would spend quite a lot of time reporting the exploits of the Gstaad Automobile Club. There were two Transafricaine rallies from Paris to Dakar, another trans-asian one for charity from St Petersburg to Beijing, a day of classic endurance racing at the Nürburgring, a day of classic formula one in Monaco, a couple of local rallies in collaboration with the Gstaad Yacht Club, a couple of winter driving courses, and more than a few fun cocktail evenings. During this time GAC has evolved, not so much in member numbers -- the club remains strictly invitation-only -- but more in terms of its place on the local car scene, with December 2007 seeing the opening of a new clubhouse in Feutersoey. This summer there has been another big step for GAC with the formalization of its modern endurance racing team. Sure there were always a few club members such as Stanislas de Sadeleer and Karim Ojjeh (pictured center above) who were regulars on the grand European circuits, racing everything from classic Formula 1 to the modern prototype endurance racing of the Le Mans Series (pictured below).

But this year the prototypers got serious...with a brand new car and team setup, the addition of professional driver Phillip Peter (pictured left above), results that see them doing fantastically in the standings for a rookie team, and a shiny new website to keep up with the all the action.

The site is great, chock full of background info, race stats, exclusive photos and video, and, our personal favorite, the journal-style cockpit accounts of the races like this one from Karim Ojjeh. The Gstaad Auto Club endurance team's next race is the big one, the 24 Heures du Mans from June 13-14, and you can follow all the action on Eurosport, MotorsTV and of course at www.gac-racingteam.com.

 

Top: From left to right, Phillip Peter, Karim Ojjeh, and Claude-Yves Gosselin contemplate a day's racing at this year's LM P2 season-opener in Barcelona.

2nd and 3rd from top: the GAC team's Zytek 07S car, unveiled to the public at a cocktail in Feutersoey just before Christmas 2008.

by Karim Ojjeh

Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium: May 10 2009

Good Afternoon,

Well what can you expect from the Belgium Arden - very unstable weather.  Not only was our testing time cut by 30 minutes but the weather was not very cooperative!  On Friday afternoon we had a dry track to start but 2 red flags.  When it was time for me to leave the pit, rain was abundant.  Our third driver took the wheel a little later but the track started to clear and we did not have the time to put slicks on.

Saturday morning was a little better, but we used up most of the one hour session to set up the car correctly.  Then hoping to complete a coupe of laps on Sunday morning at warm up, the officials cancelled the warm up due to FOG!!!  Thus, Claude-Yves and I were going to settle in during the race!

Philipp took the start, having qualified the car 5th.  Within the first lap, the safety car was deployed!  After the restart, it only took another 25 minutes before another safety car was deployed.  We took advantage of this, by refueling Philipp. 

 

At one point we were first due to our strategy, but fell to 3rd when everything settled.  I took the car and maintained third until another safety car came out.  At the restart we stayed third until I lost the position.  However, I kept close to the 3rd car until 4 laps before refueling my left-rear-lower wishbone (suspension) broke out of nowhere!  That was the end of the race.  Very sad weekend, when we know we would have kept 4th no problem and you find out that the 3rd place car was then disqualified!

Next stop ... Le Mans in 5 weeks ... Karim