Australian Rylan Gray and New Zealander Brock Gilchrist capped off their debut in the ADAC GT4 Germany event at the Nurburgring with 10th in the second race after a 20th in a trying Race 1.
The pair shared the KCMG-run Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO in two mainly wet one-hour races, the prize weekend for being the rookie and overall champion respectively in the 2023 NZ Toyota 86 Championship.
Gilchrist also tested one of Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Gen3 Chevrolet Camaro Supercars as part of his prize, earning praise from fellow Kiwi and three-times Supercar Champion, Shane van Gisbergen.
The first race began in the rain with the 29-car field behind the Safety Car. In his first time in the Supra on wet tyres, Gilchrist started sixth (where he qualified) and lost three places. He had speed and acclimatised to progress back to sixth. When the Safety Car came out again, he pitted for Gray to take over and the team elected to put him on slicks in the drying conditions.
Rain returned a couple of laps later which forced Gray to pit and change back to wets, dropping him to 25th before he clawed back five places by race’s end.
Gray would start Race 2 from fifth in the same manner – behind the Safety Car – due to further wet weather. By the end of his stint in the arduous conditions, Gray handed the car to Gilchrist with the car in eighth place.
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Towards the end, as the rain abated, the track began to dry. The Kiwi lost places as conditions continued to change but finished strongly in 10th to complete a solid weekend for the youngsters.
“The Nurburgring did its thing and threw some very challenging conditions at the whole field and when you are new to those conditions, the track and the car, that’s going to be a steep learning curve,” said Toyota Gazoo Racing New Zealand Motorsport Manager, Nico Caillol.
“Despite that the boys did everything right. They kept the car on the track, they avoided contact, they learned and got better every time they went out on track, they worked well with their engineers and impressed the team.
“They proved they could match the pace of the very best out there in one of the world’s most competitive GT4 championships.”
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