Stephane Ratel declared the starting list for the final of the World Challenge of the FIA GT Series 2013 on the streets of Baku as “the best GT sprint starting field since the days of the FIA GT1 World Championship”. He was “fully there with his assessment,” wrote Autosport at the time.
Rally legend Sebastien Loeb and ex-F1 driver Ricardo Zonta were among the top-class names for the second GT event to be held on the streets of the Azerbaijani capital, after a non-masterful City Challenge Baku event held last year on a The less ambitious layout took place in 1997, when world champion Jacques Villeneuve and his former F1 driver colleague Jos Verstappen donned a Vitaphone-operated BMW Z4 GT3. Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Rene Rast were internationally successful in the years to come.
The Boutsen Ginion Racing 2013 team founded by Olivier Laine – brother-in-law of three-time F1 race winner Thierry Boutsen – had done its part to fill the grid with talent. One of his McLaren MP4-12C GT3s was shared between Alexander Sims and Stef Dusseldorp, the latter having won last year’s Baku event together with Fred Makowiecki in a McLaren operated by Hexis. The other consisted of a Belgian hot-shot double act.
As a partner of Frederic Vervisch, the team has appointed the new McLaren junior Stoffel Vandoorne to make his debut in the closed cockpit. The 21-year-old young F1 driver had just achieved four victories and thus finished second in the Formula Renault 3.5 class ahead of champion Kevin Magnussen.
The duo finished 11th for the main race but were soon pinged by the commissioners after Vervisch drove the first of four straight chicanes. That deserved a drive through, but the car had led the first half of the hour-long event thanks to its unfairly gained advantage.
Baku 2013 start
Photo: SRO-VIMAGES / Fabre
Other problems arose when the radio, then power steering, failed. The alternator cable was torn and the performance was so badly damaged that the eventual winner Stephane Ortelli pushed the McLaren into the pit lane in his Audi R8 so as not to lose too much time.
After Vervisch was canceled only 11 laps after the hour-long competition, Vandoornes GT chance had to be used in the run in the previous qualifying race. No wonder, he says to Autosport: “It wasn’t a great experience because the car broke down during our tour. A shame.”
As far as seat times are concerned, Vandoorne’s greatest gain from his experience of swapping out a single-seater for a racing car that, due to Balance of Performance measures, had a whopping 126 horsepower less than its roadworthy 12C counterpart.
“It was pretty strange because I drove in the World Series back then and it was my first experience with GT cars,” says Vandoorne, who, in addition to his involvement with Mercedes as a Formula E driver and F1 reserve, is now a regular sports car player in the LMP2 is. “I just remember the whole movement of the car, you can feel the car rolling a lot. The car also moved a lot when braking. It was pretty strange. “
Perhaps that is why Vandoorne rates his long-term prospects for a return to GTs as “maybe”.
Stoffel Vandoorne, Mercedes-Benz EQ
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
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