Alex MacDowall, left, with his Garage 59 team-mates after their third-place Silver Cup finish in Belgium (photo: Garage 59/Drew Gibson) Cumbrian Alex MacDowall delivered his best performance of the season so far to take a podium finish. The Carlisle racer and his Garage 59 team-mates claimed third place in the Silver Cup during the TotalEnergies 24 Hours of Spa in Belgium. It saw MacDowall fight back after a challenging qualifying session as the 30-year-old and Garage 59 team-mates Valentin Hasse-Clot, Nicolai Kjaergaard and Tuomas Tujula produced an impressive showing in the twice-round-the-clock contest. “We definitely had the pace to win, the car was really strong throughout, but I’m happy to come away from the biggest race of the year with third place and our first podium of the season”, said MacDowall, the reigning Silver Cup champion.
A POINTS scoring start to the 2021 Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup was clinched by a Cumbrian driver on Sunday.
Carlisle driver Alex MacDowall started his season strong on Sunday April 18, finishing ninth place at Monza in Italy despite an incident packed three hour race. MacDowall made his competitive debut with the Garage 59 squad’s Aston Martin Vantage GT3 alongside new team-mates Valentin Hasse-Clot and Nicolai Kjaergaard, performed strongly as always but rued a few errors in race strategy. Taking the first stint of Sunday’s encounter from eighth in the Silver Cup, the driver kept his position early on but as rain started to fall 10 minutes into the contest a decision was made to change to treaded Pirelli tyres.