Adam Wilcox / VRS Motor Finance Ferrari F430 GT3 race report for Oulton Park...

Practice :

Both Friday and Saturday test session would see the VRS Motor Finance car at the top end of the charts in mixed wet and dry sessions with Adam Setting fastest times in dry and wet sessions.

Qualifying :

For the qualifying sessions Phil Burton would take to the track in session 1 and was able to qualifying the VRS Motor Finance car in a 7th Position for the first race of the 2008 season.

Adam took to the track in session 2 and would manage to get the VRS Ferrari up to 4th on the very last lap of the session " I managed to get out first onto the track and thought I would have a clean run but I caught up the GT4 car faster than I expected and couldn't get a clear lap, it wasn't until the very last lap that I managed to get a clean lap in " Commented Adam.

Race 1 :

Phil Burton would start Race 1 in 7th position and managed to get the VRS Ferrari up to 4th place behind theTech9 Lamborghini of Oliver Morley but was unable to pass the Lamborghini on the tight and twisty circuit and the leaders were able to pull a small gap before the race was red flagged due to an accident.

The race was re-started and Phil took the 2nd start of the race and again slotted in behind the Lamborghini, the race had now been shortened and Phil would come into pit after 10 mins and after a swift pit-stop Adam was now in the car and exiting the pit lane in 2nd place hunting down the CRS Ferrari of Michael Cullen, after 3 laps he was on the back of the leader and trying to find a way past, with 20 minutes to go Adam was biding his time until the CIM Ferrari of Allan Simonsen started to close up. " I started to really try to find a clean way past the CRS Ferrari but he was driving a very wide car and on this circuit there's just no way past, I tried everywhere and was probably able to lap 2-3 seconds a lap faster but he was in the middle of the road at every corner".

The CRS Ferrari crossed the finish line just 0.2s ahead of Adam and 0.3s ahead of the CIM Ferrari of Allan Simonsen.

" It's a good result to get 2nd from 7th on the grid, but we were more than fast enough to win today, these are big cars and it's not easy to get past if someone wants to make it difficult around here " Commented Adam

Warm up :

Easter Monday morning warm up was held at 9:15am and as all the British GT cars lined up for the start of the session the weather went from cold but dry to very cold and hailing, Adam took to the circuit but pitted on his first lap and changed to wet tyres to bed them in case of rain/snow/hail in the race but didn't complete a ' flying lap ' just came back into the pits.

Race 2 :

Adam would take the start of the 1 hour race and had Qualified 4th place " I felt I could have had a better Qualifying position as I didn't really get a clear lap in, something that's going to be difficult this year with the speed difference between the GT3 and GT4 car being so big [ about 10 seconds per lap at Oulton Park ] Commented Adam.

As the lights went green all the cars held their position through the first corner Old Hall and Adam was in 4th Position behind the CIM Ferrari, Tech9 Lamborghini and Trackspeed Porsche with the Chad Ferrari closely behind, the race was fairly static and Adam didn't seem to have the pace that the car had in Saturday's race " I radio 'd back to the team to say the car felt it was down on power on about lap 3, it just didn't have any snap to it and I was only pulling 4th gear on the straights where I am normally hooking 5th gear ".

Even so Adam held a stable gap behind the Trackspeed Porsche in 4th and was slowly pulling away from the Chad Ferrari as the cars all approached the Back markers, after 35 minutes of the race the team Radio 'd through and asked him to come into the pits for the mandatory driver change and hand over to Phil Burton but as the call came through the power died on the VRS Motor Finance Ferrari and Adam came to a halt on the exit of Lodge corner.

" The car literally just lost power and I was stranded on the circuit, I turned off the Master switch done a reset and it fired up again but with a serious misfire but enough power to get me back to the pits, Driver change done and Phil was quickly in the car but as he fired the engine it was clear something was wrong and he pulled out the pits only to return straight back in on the same lap to retire the car, problem was a cracked exhaust Manifold, I think we could have held onto 4th place in the race, maybe even higher and would probably be leading the Championship now, so the whole team was gutted we didn't make the finish " Commented Adam.

For more information please visit www.adamwilcox.com

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