South African Ferrari driver hoping for a better Blancpain Endurance race in France. If there is something that Cape Town driver David Perel wants to do more than anything at Paul Ricard’s third round of the illustrious Blancpain GT Endurance Series over the weekend of 25-25 June, that is quite simply just to race.
“We’re now approaching the half way point of the season and I am yet to complete a lap!” David reflected on his luckless season do far. “Funny how these things can go but as they say, ‘that’s racing’.”
Perel has however starred whenever he has been at the wheel of the Kessel Ferrari 458 GT3 he shares with gentleman drivers American Stephen Earle and Belgian Bernard Delhez and the Cape driver has regularly topped practice sessions and even put the car on pole position for the AM class in which the trio competes. But come the races, David has been forced to swallow a severely bitter pill — the Ferrari broke an engine long before his turn to drive on his planned series debut at Monza before a clutch went as David exited the pits to start his stint at Silverstone.
Still, Perel David relishes the challenge at the circuit on the French Riviera: “I tested at Paul Ricard earlier this year and I love the track,” David admitted. “So unlike at Silverstone where I had to learn the track from scratch, I can hit the ground running from lap one in practice at Paul Ricard because I have driven there before.
“The big challenge this weekend will however be the amount of time I will spend in the car — it’s a 6 hour race so each driver needs to drive for a minimum of 2 hours and I’ve not yet done more than 20 minutes of driving there, so I will face a few unknowns during the race. “That said, I’m incredibly excited and I have been working flat out to prepare for the challenge — most of all, I can’t wait to finally get my season underway for real this time!”
The Blancpain Endurance series sees up to 60 of the world’s finest supercars from Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Aston Martin, Corvette and others raced by over 150 of the world’s leading GT pilots. Follow David’s progress via live streaming and live timing on blancpain-gt-series.com and keep an eye on http://davidperel.net for daily updates throughout race weekend.