One more season ending…currently on the return from Portugal and nostalgia is taking over us 😊😍
As you know, last weekend our final round of the World Championship took place on the Estoril circuit.🇵🇹
And yes, the season goes by too quickly 😭
Being quite far from home, we took the opportunity to leave early and relax for a few days by the ocean.🌊🌊
Then, arriving at the circuit on Thursday, we resume our “Racing Routine”; installation, track identification, technical inspection, final small preparations…🤗
For Friday, we only have one free test planned.
With the weather forecast to be capricious all weekend, 🌦⛈☁️we do our laps on rain tires and everything goes well.👌
So a big cleanup after getting soaked.💦🧽🧼
Saturday comes to us and there is a change in the schedules.📆
According to meteorologists, Sunday is turning out to be very, very rainy.😱
The jury then decides to give us the “Sprint Race” on Saturday after qualifying.
So we leave for our first qualification with our tractor tires to take a shower once again. 🚿🛁
It’s slipping a little but we are happy with this session, we set the second time.
The second qualifying is intended to be very exciting since we start on wet tires but the track dries extremely quickly. We return quickly, change of
tires, we leave with mixed ones and we manage to place ourselves in second position for the starting grids.🙃👍
No time to be idle, we’re pampering our “Belle” and the choice of tires promises to be even more complicated for the “Sprint Race”.🤔
We decide to go mixed because the track is not wet enough for the rains.
We’re off for 10 laps, we’re riding on eggshells a bit 🥚🥚at the beginning, then faster and faster as it dries.
We are third behind the Birchall brothers, we continue at the same pace and above all we are not looking to make any mistakes.😎
We cross the finish line in this same position and keep our lead in the Championship with 18 points ahead.🥉
Sunday morning, in fact, the weather is not very nice.💦🌫
We still decide to do the warm up and use rain tires in preparation for the “Gold Race”.
5 hours of time separates the warm up and the race, we take the opportunity to check everything, be almost sure that nothing happens (paranoia 🤣) and also prepare all the tire choices.🔧⚙️🧰
Big surprise, the weather is finally smiling on us (never believe the meteorologists 😅) and the track is drying more and more.☀️🌤
3 p.m., that’s it, it’s the last start of the year and we’re taking it on slick tires.
We are third at the first corner and like the day before, we try to take no risks, the championship is much more important.
After a few laps we pass the Päivärinta/Schmidt crew and follow the pace of number 16.
The Christie brothers catch up with us, we continue our journey peacefully in third position and finish in this place.🥉
We spend our last checkerboard of the season under the influence of happiness 🥰😍… we are 2023 WORLD CHAMPIONS medalists!!!!!🏆🥇🥇
A season with lots of ups and downs, work, mentality and above all not giving up until the end!!!!!! 🥳💪🏻
🙏🏻🙏🏻We thank our sponsors enormously (it’s thanks to them if we were able to achieve this second dream 🤩), our team (which is actually our families, our family who supports us so much 💙), Gary Bryan for the engines that brought us to that last finish line without a DNF ⚙️🔧👌, and of course all of you always behind us to push us to the stars ⭐️ 🌟✨
Now a little rest before a busy winter and we’ll tell you why in a few weeks 😃😃
Come on, one last… GAZZZZZZ #6 🐻🐬🚀
See you in 2024 for new adventures 💫
📸Mark Walters
