Perez Keeps Test Pace Going
Chesterfield’s 17 year old race driver Seb Perez is looking forward to the next three rounds of the Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup Championship at Snetterton this weekend.
After a seven week Summer break the ever popular race series that supports the British Touring Car Championship is back in Norfolk and Perez hopes to continue where he left off after the eleven opening races of the season.
Just over a week ago Perez was at Snetterton testing for this coming race weekend where he made good headway during the day in the JHR Developments team Ginetta G55 race car.
Testing went well to plan with five fantastic sessions on track and consistently hitting around the top 5 mark of the 14 cars testing. His first session out on track saw him 4th fastest with around 0.378th second between himself and number one driver Ben Green and speeds on parts of the track of around 116mph.
After testing he commented:-
“I’m very pleased how testing has gone, during the last month or so we have been trying a lot of things and developing the car a lot”
He added:-
“We went well in the first session and then kept the pace up for the rest of the day.”
Due to regulations there was a restriction on tyres during testing hence there was a difference between teams in when they put their new tyres on. In comparison to Seb’s team mate George Gamble who was on the same strategy times were very similar, showing the pace of Perez is increasing every time.
Before the Summer break Perez encountered a mixed weekend at Croft in North Yorkshire finding all three races difficult after several knock backs. The Chesterfield race ace took an eighth, eleventh and seventh to remain in eighth place in the series.
The weather closed in for Saturday’s qualifying session with continual drizzle throughout and a wet to drying track in places, finishing in the top ten in 9th place.
Saturday’s Race one saw Perez have a battle with the midfield pack of cars, he had a realistic goal set for himself for the weekend opener. Wet weather again created its problems and Perez having to follow spray from the front runners, his priority was to stay out of trouble and a relatively trouble free race saw Perez take eighth.
Sunday’s two races saw brighter and drier weather that would benefit all the teams and their drivers, seeing them with faster times.
Race Two saw Seb start from 4th row 8th on the grid and after an incident on lap three a safety car spell bunched the pack together and saw Perez drop to 11th place and drop to 12th by lap 6. Again battling midfield saw problems for him and after a two car tussle Perez lost the car’s front splitter and causing major aerodynamic issues for the Simpson sponsored Ginetta. swapping He took the finish line in 11th place of the 15 lap race.
The weekends final race was a tough one for Seb, he ran wide on lap one after getting into 6th place only to see him drop into 10th for the next two laps. He made good progress through the tough field of cars for the remainder of the 15 lap race and an impressive comeback saw him finish seventh.
Perez spoke about the weekend and said:-
“I’m feeling really positive after the weekend to be honest.
“Of course there is still work to do, but I was really pleased with some of the passes I made and the lap times are tumbling too. We had a bit of misfortune in race two but I can see the progression in my pace this season and that’s the important part”.
The season finishes at the beginning of October with still a long way to go.
Perez travels to Norfolk at the weekend in 8th place in the Professional Driver class with 159 points and his team JHR Developments lead the Team Championship with 397 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
