Last year Alejandro Geppert claimed the McLaren Trophy Europe championship partnering with Gonzalo de Andres. As part of that prize, he was invited to a factory McLaren test at Navarra in Spain. We caught up with him to talk about the experience.
You were at Navarra for a three-day test with development team running the GT4 and GT3 cars. How has it gone for you?
It was a great opportunity, especially to not only to get to know the development programme, but also to drive the GT4 Artura and the GT3 EVO. I hadn't driven any of those cars, so it's been really special to be able to drive them and to know where you are against the McLaren Factory drivers. It was a great learning curve, a great experience, and good to be able to add a little bit of my side in terms of car development. I’m really happy, really grateful to McLaren for the opportunity and I’m looking forward for the next steps.
How did you find the test compared to your regular race weekends in McLaren Trophy Europe?
I found it a very different environment to what you used to in the customer racing side. This is a key step in my development as a professional driver, and you can see coming in it's a much more professional atmosphere. It’s like that from the beginning and that's good. You're here to do the job, not just to drive and enjoy, which you can also do for sure. You're here to help develop the cars and to give feedback to the engineers, to try to make the cars better and more reliable.
What’s it like having a direct link to the engineers developing the cars that you race?
I've never had the opportunity to drive the McLaren development cars with the development engineers on site, so it's been great to get to know the team and to work with them. It’s definitely a completely different atmosphere, with a very different work ethic to what I’m used to on a race weekend.
Having Factory Drivers Marvin Kirchhofer and Dean MacDonald here must be useful to use as a benchmark.
Absolutely. It's been great opportunity to have them by our side and to be able to not only have them as a reference, but also able to ask them questions to extract some key insights into car development, car performance or driving techniques. For sure, it's very special to have them here. They are top level GT drivers and so it's been a real privilege to be able to be part of these days and to also to have them here.
So, all things considered, do you feel it was beneficial to you?
It really was. I have to thank McLaren for inviting me to take part in the test as it has shown a new aspect of the job of a racing driver. It’s given me something to think about, not just in terms of my future development, but also in how I apply myself on race weekends and the feedback I give my engineers. It’s been a really useful few days.