By Paul Evans
Sportscar racer Seb Morris says that he is “ultra-confident” ahead of this weekend’s Blancpain Endurance Cup race meeting at Silverstone, as he contests his home round of the international series in a powerful Bentley Continental GT3.
At the opening round of the 2019 series at Monza, the 23-year old Wrexham-born driver out-performed the ‘works’ Bentley entries in pre-event practice in the Team Parker Racing-run car. He also lapped the famous Italian track third in Pro-Am and fifth overall, before things dramatically unravelled through no fault of his own.
Two unfortunate incidents, one for team-mate Rob Smith in qualifying and the second for Derek Pierce in the opening hour of the Monza race, meant that Morris, a BRDC Superstar and Motorsport UK Team UK driver, didn’t get to qualify for, or participate in, the three-hour race.
Silverstone will therefore effectively be a fresh start to the Welshman’s Blancpain challenge, and as a track where Morris has enjoyed lots of success in the past – including victory in British GT’s blue riband ‘Silverstone 500’ race in 2017 – he is excited to be back and absolutely determined to get some serious championship points on the board.
“I’m ultra-confident for Silverstone”, said Morris. “Team Parker Racing have got a great handle on this new Bentley Continental, which is extremely good in high-speed corners and, of course, Silverstone has plenty of those. We’re very determined to push on, Derek and Rob are really up for taking revenge after the frustration and disappointment of Monza.
“The weather there stopped us in our tracks with the incidents, before those we were the fastest Pro-Am by a country mile and that’s the sort of performance we’re confident we can work to deliver again at Silverstone.”
Morris is also racing in the British GT Championship this year, winning first time out at Oulton Park.
“I’d love to go out and win at Silverstone, as there’s a lot of momentum off the back of the win in British GT”, he added, “We obviously need plenty of points after missing out at Monza to get the championship back on track, so we need to make sure we can try and win at Silverstone and then fight for the win in the following round at Paul Ricard too. We’re definitely capable of that.”
A 90-minute qualifying session takes place on Saturday, with the three-hour race on the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit starting at 3pm on Sunday.