British GT – Donington Review
History made as Jonny Adam and Flick Haigh claim GT3 drivers' title, while Jack Mitchell is GT4 drivers' champion.
GT3
Starting from pole, the #33 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini, with Jon Minshaw behind the wheel, made a great start to lead the field as they entered Redgate. The sister Barwell Lamborghini of Sam De Haan was in second and had the rest of the GT3 field behind.
Minshaw was pulling out a lead while behind Haigh in her Aston Martin fell behind the Aston Martin of Graham Davidson and into P4.
With oil at Redgate corner, the safety car was deployed and the gap that Minshaw had worked hard out was wiped out. Once the marshals had cleared the mess, racing resumed and Minshaw set off again to build up another lead. Behind the action started to build up. De Haan was fighting off Farmer's #11 Aston Martin, but eventually succumbed to the Aston. Slight further back, there was contact between Andrew Howards's Aston Martin and Chris Buncombe in the Nissan which resulted in both spinning.
Outgoing GT3 Champion Rick Parfitt Jnr was challenging the Aston Martin of Derek Johnston before contact which resulted in the Bentley having bonnet damage and the Aston suffering race ending damage. Not quite the end Johnston was hoping for in his last race.
With the pitstop window opening around the 60 minute mark, the pit lane soon filled up with drivers and teams. Minshaw handed over to Keen while Mark Farmer handed the Aston over to Thiim. Keen was able to rejoin the race ahead of Thiim. Meanwhile, Jonny Adam had to serve an extra 20s due to his success penalty before he could continue. It wasn't long before he was back in fourth place.
Also making progress was the ERC Sport Mercedes-AMG was Buurman. Starting from P7 the Mercedes driver soon found himself up into P3 after some great driving.
Back out in front, Thiim was hunting Keen down and his move for the lead through the Craner Curves. Unfortunately for the Dane a 30-second penalty was given due to track limit infringements. Even though he crossed the line in P1, the penalty meant that the win went to Keen, yet because of the speed of the lead pair Thiim ended up P2. The final podium position went to the ERC Sport Mercedes duo of Buurman and Mowle. Fourth was Optimum Motorsport's Haigh and Adam which enough for them to claim the 2018 Driver's title, a record for Adam who now has 3 titles to his name, while Haigh becomes the first woman to win claim the title.
The result meant that the Barwell motorsport duo of finish runners-up again for the third year. Despite the TF-Sport pair losing P1 on the road, the result was still enough for the team to claim the Teams' Championship.
GT4
With several drivers in contention to claim the title it was Dan Mckay in his McLaren who claimed the early lead from pole sitter Ben Green (who was concious of the championship). With oil on the circuit at Redgate, McKay hit it and took an excursion through the gravel, this meant that Green inherited the lead just before the Safety Car was sent out. When racing resumed, it didn't take long before McKay to retake the lead.
This now meant that the championship contenders were now all running together from P2 through to P5 before the pitstop window opened.
Finlay Hutchinson in his McLaren came back out in front while Green and Ben Tuck fell behind due to the 15s success penalty. Second on the road was now Tolman Motorsport's O'Brien who had fallen behind after starting P3.
Jack Mitchell was in P4 and had the advantage in the championship standings, but a stop/go penalty for a pitlane infringement meant the BMW driver emerged P9 in class. Championship advantage was with the sister BMW pairing of Green/Tuck by a mere half point!
Matthiesen and Pointon in their Ginetta also had a hand on the championship during the second half of the race, but Tuck made a move on the Ginetta for P5 and back into the lead of the championship.
Behind, Mitchell got his head down after his penalty and was determined to claim the title and made a move for P8 which would be enough to seal the championship win. With only 15 minutes left of the 2 hour race, he made his move into P8 and in the lead by 1 point.
The race win went the way of Hutchinson/Mckay with remaining spots taken up with the Tolman Motorsport McLaren's of O'Brien/Fagg and Pattison/Osbourne.
The 2018 Drivers' Champion was Jack Mitchell in his Century Motorsport BMW, while second went to team mates Green/Tuck only 1 point behind.
Teams' Champion went to Tolman Motorsport courtesy of getting both cars on the podium. Century Motorsport finished second by a mere 1.5 points, while third was HHC Motorsport.
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