British GT Donington Park round-up
Victory for 2 Seas Jonny Adam / Jame Cottingham in GT3 while in GT4 Optimum Motorpsort claim victory on the road, but with the Silverstone GT4 results are under appeal, this is only provisional.
GT3
Starting from pole, Shaun Balfe in his Barwell Lamborghini made good his escape from Andrew Howard's Beechdean AMR Aston Martin, who in turn had already displaced Cottingham. Howard started to reel in the gap and finally made his move for the lead at the Esses and slowly started to edge clear.
Cottingham eventually passed Balfe and back into P2 while Balfe started to fall backwards as the pace on the Lamborghini started to go and Morgan Tilbrook, RACE LAB' Lucky Kehra and the BMW of Darren Leung all managed to get past Lamborghini before the pitstop window.
The pitstop window happened during the lenghty Safety Car period caused by Mike Price crashing his Greytstone Mercedes and badly damaging the barrier meant that when racing finally resumed, there was only 24 minutes left on the clock.
With the pack close and pitstop success penalties to be served, Ross Gunn and the Beechdean AMR should have been in front, but a very slow stop meant they lost 11s and the lead of the race.
2 Seas slick stop meant that Jonny Adam was now leading while Euan Hankey, who had taken over from Kehra was second, while Jules Gounon who jumped in after reigning champion Ian Loggie kept out out of trouble and slowly crept up the order was third.
Enduro also suffered at the pitstops while Century's BMW had to serve the maximum success penalty courtesy of their victory last time out at Silverstone.
The sister 2 Seas Motorsport of Gounon was lacking pace all weekend and when racing did resume, Adam and Hankey disappeared from Gounon, but he made sure that his Mercedes was the widest and kept Gunn and Dan Harper at bay all the way to the chequered flag to hang on to that last podium spot.
GT4
The race result is provisional due to an appeal from the Silverstone 500 round and therefore the success penalties will be added to this result once the hearing has been heard before Snetterton.
Freddie Tomlinson in his Raceway Ginetta and pole sitter Josh Rowledge in his DTO Motorsport McLaren had a great scrap out in front while Jack Brown kept a watching brief in his Optimum Motorsport McLaren. Rowledge was again and again trying to pressure Tomlinson into a mistake but a passing GT3 Lamborghini unsettled the Ginetta at Redgate. Some contact at the Melbourne Hairpin on lap 25 and Rowledge was though at Goddards.
Brown also struck quickly and made a move on Tomlinson at Redgate before the safety car was sent out just before the pit stop window opened.
After Rowledge had establishing a 6s lead, the appearance of the safety car wiped this out. Nearly the whole field pitted, but with the Silver crews having to serve longer times, the Pro-Am teams benefitted the most, noticeably Tom Wrigely in the RACE LAB McLaren.
Ian Gough started in P7, but with all those around him having to serve longer stops, Wrigely emerged out in the lead of the chasing pack headed by Aston Millar. Unfortunately for Millar as soon as he rejoined after the pit stops, he was forced to retire the car at Hollywood due to power failure.
This now meant that Charles Clark was running P2 in the Optimum McLaren, having taken over from Jack Brown, and was hounding Wrigely for the lead with 20 minutes left to run. Clark kept showing his intentions and after a great run thorugh the Old Hairpin and made his move round the outside into the lead at McLeans.
As Clark disappeared into the distance, Wrigely was a settled P2 the attention moved to the final podium position. Stuart Middleton, Lewis Plato and Darren Burke were all wanting that last step.
Plato and Middleton kept fighting away, edging forwards and backwards which finally went the way of Plato in his BMW.
The next round of the Championship is at Snetterton June 17/18 with the return of 2x 60 minute races.
