The fourth round of the European GT4 Championship will take place at Belgium’s Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps later this month – a track familiar to Akhil Rabindra.
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Akhil Rabindra, the only Indian driver in the European GT4 Championship, has risen to prominence in recent years following his consistent performances on the race track. The fourth round of the European GT4 Championship will take place at Belgium’s Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps – a track familiar to Akhil. “I’m fortunate to race there in past… have raced there in four different cars – Formula 3 and three different GT cars,” Akhil told sportslumo.com. The 25-year-old driver will hope to capitalise on that experience to gain a favourable finish in Belgium later this month.
GT4 European Series is a sports car championship, which has six rounds in a calendar year. It began in Monza, Italy in April and is scheduled to end in Barcelona, Spain in October. Just like a Formula One race, GT4 also has a qualifying before the main race, but the way it’s done is different from a F1 race. There will be two qualifying sessions – Q1 and Q2. It is followed by two one-hour races – Race 1 and Race 2. Each qualifying session and race also sees a change in drivers.
Explaining it, Akhil Rabindra, who is currently driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for the AGS Events Racing team, says, “Since we have two drivers, I share the car with my teammate. When I’m driving he’s not, and when he’s driving, I’m not. Hence we have a driver change. Typically he will do qualifying 1 and I’ll do qualifying 2. And he will start race 1 and I’ll end race 1, and I’ll start race 2 and he will complete race 2… there is a pit stop in both races.”
Started my #Motorsports journey in 2010 with Karting and now in 2020 I’m the only Asian to be selected for the @AMR_Official academy and racing for the @ffsa_gt this year. #howitstartedvshowitsgoing #howitstarted #throwback #karting #GTracing #GT4 #10Years pic.twitter.com/bh2FTrfpWn
— Akhil Rabindra (@akhilrabindra) October 26, 2020
The GT4 European Series has reached its fourth round, which will be held at Belgium’s Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps on July 30th and July 31st. Speaking about the upcoming track, Akhil dives into his memory lane to reminisce about his love affair with Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. “The race coming up is in a very special and a unique track. If you ask any racing driver in the world, they will say it’s in their top-3, top-5 favourites. It has some very unique corners, very fast, very flowing,” Akhil, who finished 2nd in Belgium in the 2019 Creventic series, states.
“I’m fortunate to race there in past… have raced there in four different cars – Formula 3 and three different GT cars. So I’m familiar with the track, familiar with the car. It’s a standard track on most racing calendars. Definitely, most people have raced there once if not more than once.”
With each lap lasting around 2 minutes and 30 seconds, Akhil Rabindra explains how a small mistake in a turn may prove costly in the end. “It’s long and flowing and a lot of corners are very connected, which means if u make one mistake here and the whole sequence will go out of place and it will all add up. It’s very important to get all the sequences right,” he elaborates. “It’s such a long lap, it’s more than 2 minutes 30 seconds… so every second and every tenth count.”
Akhil, who will be racing alongside his 19-year-old French teammate Hugo Conde, believes if they can get the Balance of Performance (BOP) right during the race, a top ten finish is a possibility. He begins, “I mean there is something called as Balance of Performance (BOP). Since there are around ten manufactures. Each car is very different. Some are heavy, some are light, some have bigger engines and some have smaller engines.”
He continues, “Considering that, we hope our BOP is favourable to us or atleast gives us a fighting chance. We have known that the McLarens and some of the other cars have very good top speed and straight-line speed, which our car doesn’t compare to them but we’re good in the corners. So I think if we have a good BOP, we should be able to fight for the top ten.”
The Bengaluru-born driver, who has also bagged a spot for the third straight year with the Aston Martin Racing (AMR) Driver Academy, is inching closer towards landing the coveted Academy Driver’s contract at the AMR academy. Akhil Rabindra finished P15 in the Silver category along with his teammate Hugo Conde in an incident-laden Round 3 of the championship in the Netherlands. Prior to that, he finished at P13 and P14 in the Silver Category in round one (Monza) and two (Circuit Paul Ricard) respectively after retiring in race one of both the races due to technical glitch.
