Last night was the final round of the AOR GTE League, season 3 held at Interlagos in Brazil.
A smaller than usual field of 15 cars had made the trip to Brazil (metaphorically speaking) and were set to enjoy 53 laps of the wonderful, undulating F1 circuit.
The Swedish trio of Magnus Vallstrom, Andreas Olsson and Joachim Ljunggren were there to represent TBR as best they could and with Magnus and Andreas being so close in the overall standings in 4th and 5th respectivley, the battle was really on to be top root vegetable….
As it turned out, Jocke’s practice during the day in official races would stand him in good stead during quali, coming home in an excellent 3rd place. Andreas was 5th with Magnus, the only Porsche runner of the trio, seemingly stuggling in 7th.That said, the 3 of them were covered by just 2 1/10’s, with pole being a further 3 tenths quicker, the scene was set for a good race.
From the start, Jocke had a small amount of contact with P2 on the exit of T1 and dropped back to 8th, thankfully with seemingly very little damage. This elevated Andreas to 3rd and Magnus to 5th. Jocke would climb back to 6th by lap 6, a position he would maintain until the pit cycle started at which time he would jump to his finishing position of 5th.
Magnus held 5th position for much of the race until lap 43 whereby he would play his master stroke and pit a little earlier than his main rival and eventually jump Andreas. After the pits were complete Magnus would end up in 3rd, a podium spot just when he needed it.
Andreas in the meantime yo-yo’d between 2nd and his finishing position of fourth…at which point the calculators would come out to see the final positions in the standings!
All in all, a decent result for the TBR boys who after 8 rounds of the league had shown themselves to be very capable racers.
Final driver standings show Magnus finishing on the bottom step of the podium in 3rd, 9 points ahead of Andreas and only 1 point behind Jason Dyer in second. Jocke improved by 3 positions to finish just inside the top 10 in 9th, a position Im sure he would have bettered had he not had 3 DNS rounds.
In the team standings, TBR Sweden (Magnus and Jocke) finished 2nd overall, with TBR Denmark (Andreas) in 6th.
Official results are here
Jocke’s view of the race is here
Great article Mr. Bedford!