Zandvoort was the stage of the start of the Sports Prototype Cup season on the second weekend of April with a double-header. It was also the start of a series of Racing Pride meetups at tracks across Europe.
On a windy Friday two of Racing Pride’s driver ambassadors, Richard Morris and Abbie Eaton, drove their first miles in their Revolution cars at the Zandvoort circuit. During free practice, the drivers got familiar with the challenging track. The grid for the races on Saturday and Sunday was decided during qualifying in the afternoon and Morris put his #500 Revolution on pole position for both races.
Just after lunchtime on Saturday the 9th of April, the lights went out for the first race of the 2022 season. The Prototype cars would share the track with the Supercar Challenge. Eaton, who was sharing the car with Portuguese driver Jorge Calado, would be competing for the first time after suffering from a back injury in the W Series at COTA race last year. On this, she said, “You never know how prepared you are until you are back in a race car. So far, it’s holding up well.”
The changeable weather on Saturday left the teams unsure of what the right strategy would be. A dry race was predicted, but just before the cars drove to the grid it started hailing. A decision about what tyres to start the race on had to be made. While both Morris and Eaton were initially keen on starting on the wets, the risk that the track would dry out within a few laps and leave runners on wets to either limp on as they waited for the pit window to open or be forced to put in an extra stop led to both drivers choosing to stay on slicks instead as they followed the advice of their crew. This turned out to be the wrong call, as the track did not dry as quickly as predicted and left the Prototype cars to slip and slide across the track whilst they quickly dropped down the pack. The only Prototype car that did put on wets at the start ended up lapping the entire field.
“Today was tricky, particularly the race conditions,” said Morris. “They were impossible to read with it hailing at the start. We didn’t know how long it would take to dry up and didn’t necessarily make the best strategy calls, but to get on the podium in the Sports Prototype Cup and make it to the end of the race unscathed is a positive takeaway.”
The Prototype cars faired better on Sunday. Clearly, they’re better suited to a few rays of sun than they are to an unexpected spring shower.
After having a little scuffle with one of the other Revolutions in the early stages of the race, Eaton had a relatively clean run. She looked destined for a third spot on the Sports Prototype Cup podium. However, Portuguese driver Jorge Calado, with whom Abbie was sharing her car, had a difficult stint as he first made a little trip through the gravel before later brushing the barriers with the front wing – meaning that all he could do was limp home to the pits to retire the car. A bit of an unfortunate end to the race on that side of the garage, but Eaton prefers not to dwell on it, simply glad to have wrapped up her first race weekend behind the wheel since her incident.
The weekend ended on an extremely positive note for Richard Morris. When asked about his short-term goals after the race on Saturday he said, “Short term goals? I want to win the race tomorrow. The goal is always to try and win the next race!” and he did exactly that by winning on Sunday, quite dominantly so.
After briefly losing the lead at the start, he quickly gained it back in the early stages of the race. Despite dealing with a red flag, two safety car situations and quite a few yellow flags due to some elbows-out racing in the Supercar Challenge, he managed to hold onto that first spot quite comfortably. At one point, he was 9.8 seconds clear of the next driver on track, before cruising the car home.
“This is an absolutely fantastic day to get the win in the big feature race,” Morris said. “It’s a big grid of cars with lots of GT3s, lots of exciting machinery. I started from pole position and had a great close battle with another of the Revolutions for the first part of the race. I was then able to take the lead and led quite comfortably for a few laps. I had to manage a red flag and a couple of safety car periods, but really the car was faultless, it was super fast. After the last safety car, I was able to put in four or five very quick laps and just get completely clear of the field and then bring it home.”
The win on Sunday was not the only thing that made this weekend a success. Morris is expanding the Racing Pride initiative internationally. The organisation that promotes and supports the LGBTQ+ community in motorsport had a meetup at the track in Zandvoort alongside the race weekend. Morris invited a group of the initiative’s friends and allies as part of Racing Pride’s aim to create a global community within motorsport for LGBTQ+ people. This community-building will continue throughout the rest of the Sports Prototype Cup season, which will race next in Silverstone in the middle of June before events in Belgium, Spain, and France.
