Italian GT Endurance Championship brings baptism of fire for Sussex ace Bartholomew

He had two new team-mates – Miguel Garcia from Paraguay and Mahaveer Raghunathan from India – racing with him at a circuit he’d never been to before, Pergusa in Sicily.

They were greeted by rain and fog, which would limit the valuable track time they all needed.

With the bad weather continuing through Friday and Saturday the organisers cancelled qualifying and replaced it with one 10-minute qualifying session on Sunday morning before the race. As he was the most experienced pro driver of the three-man pro-am crew the team elected to place Bartholomew in the car for the 10-minute session.

With rain still falling he did not disappoint and placed the car on pole position in the pro-am class and third overall for the two-hour race.

The team strategy was for Barthlomew to take the final stint of the two-hour race but as the race started the red flag was bought out after only two laps as the rain was too heavy and visibility was too poor to continue.

After a delay the race was restarted, teammate Raghunathan startand pitted on lap 21 handing over to Garcia who handed on to Bartholomew on lap 36.

He excited the pits in eighth but had to manage damage picked up earlier. And with some impressive lap times he clawed his way to fourth in class.