Richard Westbrook made the most of a difficult weekend for the Prospeed Competition Porsche team to take fourth place in round four of the FIA GT Championship at Oschersleben. Porsche works driver Westbrook and co-driver Emmanuel Collard once again took the fight to the numerically dominant Ferraris in their Porsche 997 GT3-RSR at the German track. Westbrook qualified the car sixth.

“We struggled on set-up and never got it together at the right time. We weren’t on top of the car at all,” he said. “To make matters worse, Westbrook and Collard had been excluded from their fifth place in the preceding round at Adria due to a minor homologation mix-up on all of the Porsches, and were therefore consigned to carry success ballast from their Monza win in round two.

Things improved for the race, in which twice Porsche Supercup champion Westbrook drove the first stint. “I have to say the team made a big step for the race and the car felt wonderful for the first few laps. I got up to fourth and was closing on third, but then I could feel the tires starting to go off. Our set-up was eating the tires and by the end of a stint ‘Manu’ and I were just hanging on for dear life.”

On new rubber, Collard managed to get closer to the third-place Ferrari ahead in the middle stint, but during the final shift – with Westbrook again at the wheel – the team’s chances of a podium were ruined by the safety car. Westbrook was at the front of the queue when the race restarted, meaning he was almost a lap behind the leading trio. “That completely stuffed us, but we’d said before the race that fourth was the absolute maximum we could hope for and, without any of the leaders having any trouble, that’s what we got. We learned a lot about the car this weekend – we’ve just got to make sure we use that for the rest of the season. “And, on the plus side, at least this was the first race of the year in FIA GTs where we didn’t end up in the stewards’ office!”

Westbrook now jets off to the USA to make his American Le Mans Series debut this weekend at the Lime Rock circuit in Connecticut, where he will share a Farnbacher Racing Porsche 997 GT3-RSR with German Dirk Werner. “There was no hesitation on my part when I was asked to do it, and I’m really looking forward to doing four ALMS races, all on circuits that will be new to me.”

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