Riki Christodoulou marked his racing return at the GT4 European Series in fine style by winning the Pro-Am class at a wet and windy Silverstone.
It was the 27-year-old’s first competition appearance since a one-off BRDC F4 championship outing last year and his first in a GT car since a part-season of British GT in 2012, but if there was any rust, it certainly didn’t show.
With his cousin Adam calling the shots from the pitwall, Christodoulou and team-mate Mike Hansch drove cleanly and consistently despite the best efforts of the weather to complicate proceedings during the three-hour race.
Following an identical strategy to the outright winners in GT3, Hansch pitted to hand over to Christodoulou under an early Safety Car, completing one of their three mandatory three driver changes early on.
Although he had not driven his PROsport Performance Porsche Cayman Clubsport until Friday’s open test session, Christodoulou excelled in the wet conditions and managed to carve his way through the GT4 field before handing back to Hansch for a marathon 80-minute middle stint.
But while the track was drying at the top end of the circuit, light rainfall at Stowe had caused several cars to run off the road and more black clouds were looming. Anticipating the rain could get worse before the race had began, PROsport had bolted on a set of wets for the whole of Christodoulou's race.
However, the expected rain never came and Christodoulou had to nurse his car to the flag on tyres wholly unsuitable for the conditions, although it ultimately didn’t affect their class finishing position or dampen the jubilant spirits in the garage afterwards.
“I’m absolutely delighted, to get first in the Am class first time back was a good surprise,” said Christodoulou. “With hindsight we should have pitted for slicks when I hopped in the car and we stayed out on wets hoping fortune would fall our way. Unfortunately it didn’t and I had to do the whole of my final stint on wets, which looked like slicks by the end!
“If we had got onto the slicks it would have been interesting to see where we might have ended up, but winning our class is the most important thing and I’d like to say a massive thank you to Chris Esser, to my team-mate Mike and the whole team for the opportunity.”
Christodoulou hopes to continue his affiliation with PROsport at the next round of the GT4 European Series at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium next month and believes his partnership with Hansch has excellent potential going forward.
“A result like this gives you a lot of self-belief that you can hop into a new team, a new car and bring home a result,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of driving in single-seaters, so it’s not like I’ve come in completely cold, but having a roof over your head and very little aero compared to the single-seaters does take some getting used to.
“You can always improve yourself in a few areas, so hopefully if we can get out again at Spa then I’ll be able to work on a few things. I really enjoyed working with Mike, he can be really happy with the job he did, so now the goal is to keep pushing and do some more racing together.”
