British GT Silverstone 500
Wins for RAM Racing and Team Parker Racing as the British GT Championship visits Silverstone for its blue ribband event, the Silverstone 500.
GT3
Starting from pole position, Graham Davidson in his TF-Sport Aston Martin got into Copse Corner first with a gaggle of various GT3 marques following headed by Ian Loggie in his RAM Racing Mercedes AMG.
Twenty five minutes into the race Loggie pitted to hand his RAM Racing Mercedes over to Callum Macleod. The McLaren GT3 of Balfe Motorsport were now chasing the lead Aston Martin before they made their stop 45 minutes into the race. The TF-Sport team decided to go as far as possible before pitting.
Once the first round of stops had sorted themselves out, it was the Balfe Motorsport McLaren that had emerged in the lead, closely followed the RAM Racing Mercedes and the TF-Sport was now back in third. The McLaren needed to make sure they had a gap of 10s, courtesy of their win at Snetterton, if they were to emerge in the lead after the final stop.
With 20 minutes left on the clock, it was the TF-Sport Aston out in front, but only by 5s ahead of RAM Racing Mercedes. It would have been a three-way fight to the flag, but the Balfe Motorsport McLaren had to serve a 10s stop/go penalty for a pitstop infringement.
With only 2 cars now fighting for the win, all the attention was on whether the Aston could maintain the lead on older tyres than the Mercedes on fresher rubber. The gap was initially 5s but this was soon whittled down just 0.5s. Davidson was making the Aston Martin the widest Aston Martin as Loggie was doing everything to try and get past. This contained for several laps.
Just four minutes from the end of the three hours it all unfolded. At the Maggots/Becketts part of the circuit the lead pair came across GT4 traffic. The TF-Aston saw a chance to put the lapped GT4 Mustang between them just before the Hangar Straight and went for it. Unfortunately contact was made between the Mustang and Aston as they exited Chapel which allowed the RAM Racing Mercedes to take the lead of the race and the Aston spinning off into retirement.
With Balfe Motorsport having to serve their stop/go and now the demise of the TF-Sport Aston, the RAM Racing Mercedes took an easy ride to the flag and duly took the win by 36s over the sister TF-Sport Aston Martin. Indeed TF-Sport were looking at a double podium, but now only had a second place to their name. Third was the JRM Group Bentley, who lost a place to the TF-Sport Aston in that final stint. Third soon became a disqualification as their Bentley failed the weight check at the end of the race. A shame as they had battled through from P11 and also had to endure a stop/go penalty.
Third and claiming the first podium in the British GT was now the WPI Motorsport Lamborghini. The Lamborghini had performed an audacious double pass over couple of corners in the opening stint.
GT4
Pole sitter Josh Price in the TF-Sport Aston Martin GT4 made a great start and soon started to build a decent lead ahead of his rivals. Unfortunately for the #95 Aston Martin a raft of stop/go penalties hampered their chances of a win.
Taking over the lead was the #4 Tolman Motorsport McLaren, but they suffered a technical issue after their last stop and forced them to retire just after their last stop.
Through all this came through the Team Parker Racing Mercedes GT4. The Pro/Am pairing also benefitted from having to serve shorter pitstops compared to the rival Silver/Silver pairings. Nick Jones kept the Mercedes there or thereabouts during his two stints and Scott Malvern had great pace and kept the advantage to rival Pro/Am ERC Sport.
The ERC Sport Mercedes had a great race and starting from back in P16 both drivers drove hard to finish the race around 14s behind the fellow Mercedes of Team Parker Racing.
With problems for both TF-Sport and Tolman entries, the #15 Multimatic Ford Mustang looked good to benefit as it had been running amongst the top 6 throughout the 3 hours. Unfortunately a pit/stop infringement meant that a 30s penalty was applied post race and pushed the Mustang down to fifth.
The beneficiaries of the Multimatic penalty was the Beechdean AMR of Kelvin Fletcher and Martin Plowman adding another podium to their collection.
Racing resumes at Donington Park this weekend.
