American based New Zealand racing driver Matt Halliday is extremely pleased with his performance in his second appearance in European GT endurance racing at the second round of the Blancpain Endurance Series held at Great Britain’s Silverstone circuit earlier this morning (NZ Time).
After good performances in practice and qualifying, Halliday and his co-drivers Nikolaus Mayr-Melnhof (Austria) and female driver Rahel Frey (Switzerland), piloted their Audi R8 LMS ULTRA GT3 to 8th place out of 57 starters from 11th position on the starting grid.
The No. 2 Audi was competing as part of the three-car Belgian Audi Club Team WRT whose other team cars finished 2nd and 3rd overall to complete a highly successful weekend for the professional outfit with all three cars finishing within the top ten.
Halliday also showed his competitiveness in the hotly contested series by setting the 9th fastest lap time of the race. Practice and qualifying went relatively smoothly for the three drivers as they fine-tuned the car to the conditions with Halliday setting the 11th fastest lap time in his qualifying session:
“This is not only a positive result for me but also the team as we were the first three Audis across the finish line. I am really happy to be competitive with all the other Audi drivers and being able to run at the top end of a large field of cars. We also had Colin Giltrap from Audi NZ as a guest so it was great to provide a good result with a long term supporter of mine present.” said Halliday after the race.
The next round of the series is scheduled to take place on the 22nd of September at the Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France.
