Race Driver Interviews
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RACING IN THE GULF 12 HOURS
Club Racer David Whitmore Races Optimum Motorsports GT4 Aston Martin
Intro
We’ve been following our friend Dave Whitmore for the last year, he’s a proper character and has a hell of a story (more of that to come!). Just before the pandemic hit, the Club Enduro ace gave us a call, he was beaming with excitement and announced he would be driving an Aston Martin GT4 car at the GULF 12 Hours! Not only that, but he would be racing with Optimum Motorsport, a multiple British GT winning outfit who would be taking their team to the Yas Marina Circuit.
Unfortunately we couldn’t get over to Abu Dhabi but we asked Dave to vlog the journey, to give us a little insight into the prep, the racing and the behind the scenes. Armed with a selfie stick, his iPhone and some northern whit Dave set off…
We got to work editing the videos and so we’ve made a cheeky 3 part vlog which we hope you’ll enjoy watching.
Shout out to Optimum Motorsport for the awesome photography – here’s a link to their site: http://www.optimum-motorsport.com
Episode One
The Prep and Journey
The first episode is all about the preparation. The paperwork is something that most rookies and trackday goers don’t consider and the amount of which might come as a surprise. At this level, the small details count and Dave’s dedication to studying this illustrates how important it is. Radio protocol, rules & regs, Aston Martin manual and an annotated map showing the braking and gear selection points are briefly touched on.
We then head to the airport and get a glimpse of Dave’s enjoyment as he flies First Class to the circuit. Dave’s personal journey coming from darkest parts of Manchester to fulfilling his dream underpins the first episode and it’s great to see his excitement and gratitude, he’s living the dream.
Episode Two
Day One & Practice
It’s quite odd just relying on just Daves phone footage, but all credit to him, even before the session Dave had his camera out capturing some of the action.
Episode two gives us a brief insight into the prep before the session, we get to meet the other drivers, Michael Dinnan and David Holloway on the track walk, although that gets cut short fairly abruptly 😂. . Dave then takes us behind the scenes before entering the first session, he does brilliantly considering it’s his first time at the Yas Marina Circuit.
The circuit looks absolutely amazing at night with the floodlights turned on and it must have been spectacular to have sat in the drivers seat. Dave did 24 laps in total and was only 7 hundredths of a second behind Michael.
Episode Three
It's Race Day
Well it’s race day and you just get the impression Dave is having the absolute time of his life. This video really sums up his excitement to be racing. We’ve taken Dave’s iPhone footage and combined it with some of the GULF 12 Hour coverage to give you some out of cockpit views.
At the start of the race the car had an electrical fault which mean’t the team lost a few laps to their competitors. However the Optimum Motorsport team quickly fixed this and Dave along with the other drivers managed to claw back some of the lost time meaning they finished a respectable 5th in their class.
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