Verstappen's Racing Team Secures Impressive Second Place in Endurance Class Debut
While Max Verstappen was busy in Bahrain, his team, Verstappen.com Racing made their GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup (GTWC Endurance) debut last weekend.
The team, that consist of Thierry Vermeulen, Chris Lulham and Harry King, finished second with their Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, run by 2 Seas Motorsport.
Verstappen.com Racing on the podium
The season opener of the series was hosted at the Paul Ricard track in France. Making their debut, the Verstappen.com Racing car finished second in the Gold class, and in P9 overall.
Following the race, the drivers were proud. Thierry Vermeulen, the son of Verstappen's manager, was really happy with their performance. "I just wanted to say that we’re all extremely proud that the Verstappen.com Racing team and the project have started. I think we all worked extremely hard over the winter to be here at Paul Ricard. Those first laps were a big learning curve, to get to know the car in a race scenario with other cars around us."
He continued: "But I think we did extremely well. We stayed out of trouble in those first two stints. We had good pace, especially considering we had a difficult start to the weekend with some technical issues. Everyone at the team worked extremely hard to bounce back and that’s exactly what we did, so I am quite proud of that"
Chris Lulham made the transition from sim racing and Team Redline to compete on track in a real racing car. "I would say traffic management, the brutality of the race and different variables that you’re not used to, such as tyre pickup and the dust. It all has a very significant effect on the balance of the car, the feeling you have underneath you. To me this is the biggest learning curve and probably where I lost the most time, but also there’s room to improve. But overall, I’m very happy," Lulham said of his debut.
Harry King completed the final two shifts of the race. "I jumped in the car for a double stint, which was two hours. I picked up the car in 15th position and we were about fourth in class, so we had a bit of work to do. I managed to fight my way through the field, stayed focused, stayed motivated for two hours. We just clinched second place on the final fifteen minutes of the race. The majority of the challenges was just staying focused and chipping away."
"Of course, it’s very easy to get very relaxed once you've accomplished an overtake, but my ambition was to aim higher and to go for the win. We finished one step short of that, but all things considered this weekend, I think it’s a really strong performance from everybody, from the team, from the pit stops to the engineering and also my teammates Chris and Thierry. So big credit to them and it’s been a pleasure to join them in my first round here," he concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder
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