British GT Donington Park Round-up
GT3
Starting from pole, the TF-Sport Aston Martin with Graham Davidson at the wheel, was off as the field got away from the rolling start ahead of two hours of racing.
Keeping up with the Aston Martin was Michael Igoe in the WPI Motorsports Lamborghini. However trying to fight to get the lead away as tricky and slowly the Aston edged further and further ahead to give themselves a margin of three seconds.
Fortunately for the #47 Aston Martin this lead increased as the unfortunate Igoe had issues and dropped back. Inheriting the chase was the Balfe Motorsport McLaren of Shaun Balfe. Having initially starting back in P4 he had made some progress but as the clock ticked 30 minutes he was eight seconds behind the leader.
With an hour gone, the lead was whittled down to a mere 1.8s after Balfe had been making ground to catch the lead Aston. Lapping the traffic also helped the McLaren driver.
The hour mark was the cue for the drivers and the front to hand the cars over to their respective co-drivers, Davidson to Jonny Adam and Balfe to Shaun Bell. Both duly pitted at the same time and emerged with 1s seperating the Aston Martin and McLaren.
As the race entered the last hour, the gap went up and down as the pair made their way through the traffic. The three time Champion doing what he does best out front but Bell wasn't going to let the Aston out of his sight.
With just over five minutes left, Adam made a mistake and ran wide. This allowed the McLaren to get closer and the gap was down to under 0.5s.
Adam though was having none of it and once composed, set off again and at the flag managed to pull a bit more of a gap to the McLaren. The victory was win number 15 for Adam, equalling the record with Phil Keen and the first win for the all new Aston Martin Vantage.
The third step of the podium went to the Barwell Motorsport duo of Sam De Haan and Jonny Cocker. Starting from P5 De Haan held station during his stint before handing over to Cocker. During the pitstops Cocker drove steady and managed to gain places while those around had to make their stops. At the flag, Cocker finished 14s behind the McLaren of Balfe. By finishing third, the pair are now in second place in the Championship behind the sister Lamborghini of Phil Keen and Adam Balon who brought their Lamborghini home in P5. Sandwiching the pair of Lamborghini's was the WPI Motorsports Lamborghini of Igoe and Dennis Lind.
GT4
Pole sitter Multimatic Motorsport's Scott Maxwell had a disastrous start as they fell back to P3 as the Tolman Motorsport McLaren of Josh Smith went to the front, followed by HHC McLaren of Callum Pointon.
Maxwell soon though managed to get back past Pointon and went about chasing the Tolman McLaren. Just as Maxwell closed in, Smith had to pit his McLaren with technical issues and out of the race and the Multimatic driver inherited the lead.
As the pitstops took place, the lead changed to the #42 Century Motorsport of Mark Kimber and the Multimatic Ford with Seb Priaulx then set about the 3s gap to the lead BMW. With 20 minutes left on the clock, Priaulx made a move to get back out front at the Melbourne Hairpin using the GT3 cars to help him.
That is where Priaulx remained, but Kimber couldn't join him on the podium as with mere minutes left, the BMW ended up in the Donington Park gravel. This handed P2 to HHC pairing of Pointon and Dean Macdonald. The final step of the podium went to the #5 Tolman McLaren of Lewis Proctor and Jordan Collard. With Priaulx and Maxwell claiming top honours, this also meant that they now lead the GT4 Championship ahead of Pointon and Macdonald.
The next race is across the channel as the Championship makes it's annual pilgrimage to Spa-Francorchamps 20/21 July.
