Fourth For Frank in Gulf 12 Hours
24-year-old Cumbrian racing driver Frank Bird made the most of this opportunity from winning the recent AMG Young Driver Test to take a superb fourth place overall in the Lenovo Gulf 12 Hours race which took place at the YAS Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi at the weekend.
Penrith-born Frank was part of a three-driver team entered by the GruppeM Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing team where he competed alongside 21-year-old Italian Lorenzo Ferrari and the experienced Austrian Lucas Auer in the Mercedes-AMG GT3.
The event, which formed the final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli saw 28 teams in action in the Middle East’s premier GT endurance race, whereby the team endured some technical issues during Friday’s open practice before qualifying in fifth on Saturday to start Sunday’s race from the third row, just half a second off the pole position time.
Thereafter, an exciting and hard-fought race saw an action-packed encounter which featured battles for the top positions right until the chequered flag and ended with victory for Mercedes-AMG GruppeM Racing’s Maro Engel, Luca Stolz and Mikael Grenier.
Team WRT’s BMW M4 GT3, driven by MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi, Dries Vanthoor and Nick Yelloly, pushed their rivals all the way to the flag, finishing just under 13 seconds behind after 348 laps of racing. Mercedes-AMG Team 2 Seas completed the overall podium in third place with Jules Gounon, Maximilian Goetz and Fabian Schiller just a lap ahead of Bird and his teammates.
Frank Bird: "P4 in the race this weekend was pretty good considering we had a few minor issues in our first few days of practice. It was a long, hard race but I think we maximised everything so it was satisfying to leave the weekend with a positive result. We had a few little setbacks along the way but nevertheless, a top-four placing is a very strong result on my Pro car debut. Thanks to AMG for this opportunity after winning the Young Driver Shootout in Valencia, it was a huge privilege to represent the brand and hope it’s not the last time. Thanks to my teammates Lucas and Lorenzo and to Team GruppeM for their hard work which didn’t go unnoticed. Also congratulations to our teammates for winning the race overall.”
Images: Frank Bird finished fourth in the Lenovo Gulf 12 Hours race for Mercedes.
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