Team Modena enjoyed a solid start to life with the Lamborghini Gallardo at
Snetterton as BTCC racer Adam Jones and Rob Wilson secured a fourth place finish on the cars British GT debut.
A troubled Saturday saw the car only complete a handful of laps and qualify 14th on the 22-car grid but a superb effort from the team saw the gearbox issues that had dogged the car sorted for race day, and Jones was able to hint at the potential of the brand-new Gallardo with the quickest time in the early morning warm up.
In the race Jones had to go off the circuit on the opening lap as another car spun in the first corner, but from then on he rapidly moved up the order, regularly running as the quickest car on the track, and moved into second place on lap 29. With a clear track he was really able to explore the Gallardo's performance, and next lap took an amazing 1.5 seconds off the GT3 lap record for the 1.9-mile circuit.
"I practically had to do a u-turn round another car on the grass at the start," he said. "I saw him spin, then he came back to the inside where I was aiming for. After that I had to drive my way through the field, but the car felt really good, and to do that lap time when we managed so little running shows there is much more to come from it.
Jones pitted when the Safety Car came out for an incident, but a problem with the car's wheel nuts kept them stationary for longer than intended, and Wilson rejoined in eighth. In the final hour of the race he was able to bring the Gallardo through to fourth place - just missing out on a podium finish on Team Modena's debut in the competitive series.
"We are over the moon with how today has gone," team principal Graham Schultz said. "I was just happy to have the car on the grid, but to take fourth and walk away with the lap record as well really shows the potential of the Gallardo.
It has been a good performance all round, we had two new drivers in for this race and they did really well, plus we had to split our team between here and the Le Mans test day."
