GT4 Championships

Bastiaans & Harkema win race 3 at Zandvoort

© Frank de Bruycker

Phil Bastiaans and Mathijs Harkema won the third HTC Dutch GT4 Championship race at Zandvoort this afternoon. The Bilderberg Porsche Eindhoven drivers briefly lost the lead after the pit stops, but quickly regained it and then went on to win their second race of the day.

Even before the start there was drama at Solid State Racing. Having already lost one car in qualifying the team lost a second car as the Corvette C6 driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen lost drive coming out of the pit lane. The number 64 was parked on the inside of the Tarzan-corner and did not start the race.

As a result the feature race of the HTC Dutch GT4 Championship at the Wijzonol Trophy started with fourteen cars. At the standing start Phil Bastiaans pulled away as the lights went green and was already over a second ahead of the rest of the field as they completed the first lap.

Behind Bastiaans it was Christiaan Frankenhout who attacked Duncan Huisman in the Ekris BMW M3 GT4 and heading into the Tarzan-corner on lap six the Porsche went around the outside to move into second position. Frankenhout was unable to catch Bastiaans however and the gap between first and second remained around a second for the next couple of laps.

As the pit window opened most drivers went in apart from Frankenhout, who inherited the race lead as a result. Behind him Henry Zumbrink (Corvette), Ricardo van der Ende (BMW) and Jan-Joris Verheul (Aston) got back out in a tight group, with the Corvette just in front of the BMW. Verheul tried to attack, but had to back down and remained in fifth place.

After Frankenhout had also made his pit stop and handed over the Porsche to Ferdinand Kool the PS Autosport Porsche was still in the lead, but Mathijs Harkema was less than a second behind and closing in rapidly. On the next lap Harkema had already passed Kool and at the finish the gap was .750 seconds. Simon Knap’s quick laps and excellent pit stop meant his KTG BMW was now in third – ahead of Zumbrink, Van der Ende and Verheul.
?Kool tried hard to get back but did not get any closer than one second. Into the final lap the gap was 1.020 seconds and Harkema was able to cruise to victory on his last lap. At the finish he was .634 seconds ahead of the PS Autosport Porsche and 3.308 seconds ahead of Simon Knap.
?As a result of Bastiaans and Harkema winning race three and the Ekris BMW M3 GT4 finishing outside the top three it is now Bastiaans who leads the championship. Frankenhout is second, while Huisman is third.

A total of 12.500 spectators watched the races today at a windy Zandvoort.