First time out for Kox Racing
The start of the 2013 season in Europe started with the GT Open Winterseries at Paul Ricard in the south of France.
It was also the start for team Kox Racing, which marked a new highlight in the career of the fast Dutchman!
Peter started this event together with one of his gentleman driver colleagues Nico Pronk in the beautiful red Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 build by Reiter Engineering.
The meeting was seen as a test to give Nico a lot of "seat time" as there was plenty of driving time this weekend arranged by the organizer GT Open who, as always, did a fantastic job!
From the five one hour free practice sessions the Gallardo topped 3 times the time sheets.
Then it was time for the two individual timed sessions to establish the starting grids for both races.
Nico took the first qualifying session and shaved more then 3! seconds of his personal best time from last season to put the car on P16 in this competitive field.
Peter went out immediately in the second session and after first running into some traffic, created a clear lap and took pole position outright with a new GT3 lap record!
The crew then quickly had to prepare the car for the first 50min race, which they did faultless and the Gallardo left the pit lane with Nico at the wheel for the start.
Nico started well and worked his way up to P12 in the process, posting good and consisting lap times. After the pit window opened Nico brought the car in and the team had a good stop.
Peter went out and could bring the car to P6 which was the maximum they could do for race one.
Thus Peter started from pole for the second race and took the lead with the persisting Mirko Venturi in his Ferrari in pursuit. Peter could hold on to the lead the gap between them never more then 1 second, posting the fastest lap of the race in the process!
After the, again, quick stop, Nico had in his second lap contact with another car, which resulted in damage to the drivetrain, forcing him to park the car in the pit lane.
All in all it was a good start to the 2013 season for the new named team, which will enter the ELMS season from the second race onwards(Imola) and will also do some additional races in various championships.
