Silverstone round-up

Text & Images: Ian Cutting

Victory for Darren Leung and Dan Harper in their Paradine BMW GT3, while Ravi Ramyead and Charlie Robertson claim GT4 honours in the Championship's blue ribbon event, Silverstone 500.

GT3

Pole sitter Morgan Tillbrook led the field into Copse and the opening part of the race, closely followed by Kevin Tse, Giacomo Petrobelli and Rob Collard who made his way up to P4 from starting down in P8.

Being a 3 hour race the teams could pit at any point and after 30 minutes, some just did that. But a Full Course Yellow and subsequent Safety Car after affected Blackthorn and 2 Seas as they pitted just before the FCY was called.

Paradine used the safety car period to make a second stop to put Leung back in behind the wheel after Harper did a handful of slow laps under the FCY. Barwell and 2 Seas likewise did the same for #78 and #18 cars.

The second FCY was thrown after contact between Team Abba's Sam Neary and Spirit Of Race's Matt Griffin. The slight contact at Vale resulted in the Ferrari being beached in the gravel trap. This enabled the Am drivers to get back behind the wheel.

The third and final FCY was needed to retrieve the Mahiki Lotus and this is what shook the field up. Firstly the 2 Seas Mercedes of Kiern Jewiss and Charles Dawson who were running in P5. Despite the need to stop again, they were running P2 as the race restarted again and soon took the lead. However, needing to stop again due to maximum stint length they dropped back behind Harper.

Both Barwell Lamborghini's and the #18 2 Seas Mercedes all had penalties and took them out of contention for the win. This left Optimum and Blackthorn as the only other challengers for victory. Stopping with less than 65 minutes on the clock on paper, seemed faster than coming back in for another stop, but when the pit-lane remained closed after the Safety Car had passed, Marvin Kirchofer and Jonny Adam both lost around 20s waiting for the red light at pit exit to turn green.

Jewiss took the lead from Harper but Paradine were given a 1s stop-go for a short pitstop so when the Mercedes pitted he emerged back in the lead. However a yellow flag infringement when Dawson was behind the wheel earned the team a drive-through and the lead went back Harper in the BMW.

With 10 minutes of the race left, Jewiss had eradicated the 3s gap and on the final lap the pair were running nose to tail. Harper took the flag a mere 0.580s ahead of the Mercedes.

Completing the podium was Kirchofer and despite the gap when he rejoined after being held in the pit-lane was just under 9s off the the lead.

GT3 Winner #91 Paradine Motorsport

GT4

Aiden Neate lead the field in his Lotus and quickly made a gap to Ramyead and Josh Miller. Ramyead pitted under the first FCY and subsequently put the pressure on Neate as the Safety Car pitted. A different strategy meant that they ran long through the second caution and therefore had a huge lead over their rivals.

However around half distance disaster struck when the Lotus lost its left rear wheel as it was heading to The Loop and sent Neate out of the race. This meant that Ramyead and Century were the ones to enjoy the lead.

They were chased by Marc Warren in the Optimum McLaren after they had suffered a beating on the first lap. Ramyead pulled out a lead and Robertson managed to extend that when he took over for his stint. During the final hour, the gap extended back to Jack Brown.

Century Motorsport's Branden Templeton and Chris Salkeld completed the podium making it a good day for BMW.

GT4 Winner #71 Century Motorsport

The next round of the Championship takes place at Oulton Park May 24-26.