Jack Bartholomew has bitter sweet start to Championship

The opening round of the 2018 UAE Lamborghini Super Trofeo Championship took place on the 2nd & 3rd of February at the 3.45-mile-long Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi. Jack Bartholomew was partnered with Australian Aiden Read who raced in GT3 in 2017.

Practice took place on Thursday, but Jack was hampered by some electrical issues which reduced his running time on track. This meant he would have to go into qualifying on Friday having had only 7 laps practice. Drawing on his experience of the track from last year, Jack managed to qualify the Lamborghini Huracan in P2 with his team mate Aidan qualifying P4.

Aidan started race one from his P4 grid position and drove a solid stint, handing over to Jack still in P4 at the midway point. Jack managed to move up to P2 before an issue with the fuel pump which had started during the first stint, deteriorated, making hard acceleration impossible. As he was chasing down the leader, the car was losing power to the point where he was unable to defend his position and on the final lap unfortunately slipped back down the field to finish a disappointing 4th.

The team worked overnight to fix the issue and confident they had found the fault, Jack lined up on the front row of the grid in P2 for the next race. Starting from the outside, Jack had to slot into 3rd at the first corner but continued to hold on to the leading cars. At the midway point, he handed the car over to Aidan, and with the benefit of a slick driver swap, Aidan managed to catch the leaders and took second place at the flag.

Jack Bartholomew

“The first race was really disappointing as we had really good pace and a guaranteed 2nd place, to lose it on the last lap was tough but we made up for it in race 2. It’s just a shame that we didn’t come away with a double podium. I want to thank the team for all their hard work over the weekend and also my sponsors, I’m really looking forward to the next race in Dubai”.

The next round of the UAE Lamborghini Super Trofeo Championship will take place in Dubai on the 16th and 17th of February.