Points across the board in both WEC and GT Open

Nick Moss and Joe Osborne secured two fourth-place finishes this weekend (10 - 11 September) at GT Open’s fifth round in Austria to collect a healthy 16 points towards their championship battle, with Team Project 1 x Inception racing crossing the line at the 6 Hours of Fuji eighth, respectively.

Saturday’s race 1 of the GT Open weekend commenced 35 minutes earlier than expected due to incoming showers, a warning that posed a threat all weekend in the Styrian hills. It was a clean getaway for Nick Moss, who started third in class (seventh overall), but dropped drastically in the opening few laps due to the ever-changing conditions out on track.

A long-fought battle with Theeba Motorsport’s #18 Mercedes-AMG cost Nick time whilst trying to hunt the Pro pack, thus he pitted with 40 minutes left on the clock to hand over to Joe. Cycling through their pitstop routine (with their success penalty from Hungaroring), Joe re-joined the race and made his way up through the field to eighth.

It was, once again, another battle with Theeba but this time for third place overall within the final few laps of race 1 with ultimately, they claimed.

Come Sunday, it was role reversal of Saturday and Joe was on qualifying duties. For a while, he was sat on provisional pole, but not before he was pipped to the post by the #777 Olimp Audi by 0.3s.

The first of three Safety Cars during race 2 was released only five minutes after the green flag had dropped as the #91 Baron Motorsport Ferrari found itself in the gravel. Upon the restart, Joe lost second place to the #3 Audi before entering the pits to hand over to Nick.

Contact between the two Audi’s (#3 and #777) who were battling for the lead made contact out in front, causing the second Safety Car period with Nick sitting fourth (overall). 13 minutes on the clock and restart number two was underway, but no sooner had the Safety Car come in, it was deployed for the third, and final time as drama struck again - this time at Turn 1 with a multi-car pile-up.

Debris and cars cleared, three minutes remained however, it wasn’t enough for the team to get up onto the final spot on the podium, settling for fourth overall (P3 Pro) collecting a total of 16 points across the two days.

Meanwhile, out in Fuji, Japan, Takeshi Kimura came into the #56 Porsche 911 RSR in place of fellow Bronze driver, Brendan Iribe. The team clocked the fastest GTE-Am time in FP3 and settled for a P5 starting position for Sunday’s 6 Hours of Fuji once all post-qualifying penalties had been applied to others.

Ultimately, it was an eighth-place class finish for the trio, claiming a handful of points along the way as they head into the final World Endurance Championship race, the 8 Hours of Bahrain, on a total of 28 points.

Ollie Millroy - #56 Porsche 911 RSR WEC Driver

“Fuji wasn’t kind to us today. Four de-laminated tyres and a tough day for the Porsche’s with less horsepower than the Aston and Ferrari made it a game of damage limitation. We were eighth at the flag, it was a mega job by my team mates considering the circumstances.”