Carrera Classic racing season continued in beginning of June with the GRAND PRIX DE L’AGE D’OR / GRAND PRIX OF THE GOLDEN AGE at Dijon-Prenois racetrack. This event is the oldest historic car meeting in France as the first Coupes de l’Age d’Or was held on the Rouen-les-Essarts circuit in 1964 as a curtain-raiser to the French Formula 1 Grand Prix. Later the event moved to Dijon. This very technical 3,8 km track was also the place where Keke Rosberg won his first F1 race in 1982, 4 seconds in front of Alain Prost.
For us Dijon was a good weekend. It was the first 2.0 Litre Cup race this season which was driven in dry conditions. We started with five good sessions in the Peter Auto test day on Thursday. In the qualifying on Friday we were finally 11th out of 27 cars. The final start position is based on average of the two drivers. There were many disqualifications due to track limits, which helped a bit. Risto drove again well and was 4th fastest driver on the track in the qualification.
The race was on Saturday. We started as 11th and Risto started very well. By the 9th lap he had taken us to the second position which he kept for the next 12 laps, until number one car came to the pit. This is when he moved to the lead for the next 3 laps before the pit stop. After the pit stop Jussi left to the second 45 min stint at the position 7. The differences between the cars were very small and many cars had their better drivers allocated to the second shift. Jussi drove for a while on the position 8, but then the faster cars were reaching us and the final position was the predictable 16/27. Risto´s best lap time was finally 6th fastest in the race. We were lucky to have Nicolas de Buttet from Dijon Auto Racing to help us during the race.
Overall we were very happy with the race. Car was working well, no technical problems and the drivers did their job well without any bigger mistakes. This was nice result after two difficult races in Barcelona and SPA.
