Outstanding Test for Perez
Chesterfield’s 17 year old race driver Seb Perez is looking forward to the next two rounds of the Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup Championship at Croft in North Yorkshire this weekend (10-11 June)
Last week (Wednesday) saw Perez up at Croft testing for this coming race weekend where he made good headway during the day in the JHR Developments team Ginetta G55 race car.
The days testing went to plan with five fantastic sessions on track and Seb consistently hitting the top 5 of the 20 cars testing. He made second and third fastest times during the day with gaps of around 0.5 seconds between himself and number one slot drivers and speeds on parts of the track of around 120mph.
After testing he commented:-
“I’m very pleased how testing has gone and consistently in the top 5 over the whole day and hopefully carry that on through into the race weekend”
Just over two weeks ago Perez encountered a tough weekend at Oulton Park in Cheshire for his latest two rounds in the Ginetta championship.
Drama started the weekend in qualifying where he missed a 5 minute window whilst in the pits due to a drying track currently sitting in 5th with a potential 2nd place that never happened.
Race one on Saturday afternoon saw Seb start from 6th row placed 11th on the grid, by end of Lap one he had dropped two places after being overtaken by Colin White and Jason Baker and by lap 3 he was back in 11th.
After a 6 lap safety car deployment he in was in 9th place by the end of lap 10 where he stayed until the end of the 25 minute race.
Race two saw a 23 minute battle commence, starting on 4th row of the grid, as the lights went out Perez had big issues loosing 5 places by end of lap one to 12th place and loosing another place to Jac Constable on laps 2 and 3. By lap 5 he was back in 12th position that included the safety car making an appearance for two laps. On lap 11th he managed a good move saw him take Adam Higgins and move into 11th place taking the chequered flag after 14 laps in 11th.
Perez spoke about the weekend and said “the weekend had been a tough one, Oulton Park is a difficult place to overtake, myself and the car is improving every time I get in it and it’s a massive learning curve from what I have come from, so its about getting everything right to stand me in a good place for the future”
He added “the car is performing very well and my team JHR Developments are doing a great job on the car”
The season finishes at the beginning of October and he was asked about his championship hopes with still a long way to go and commented “We are just looking at each race separately at the moment as the championship isn’t really in the bag; I just want to make sure we are still improving and getting the best results possible.”
Perez travels to the North Yorkshire circuit of Croft at the weekend in 8th place in the Professional Driver class with 121 points and his team JHR Developments take lead the Team Championship with 271 points.
You can follow Seb and all the action on Sunday on ITV 4 where races are televised live alongside the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.
Editorial and Photography by Paul Horton
