Somehow, all 21 GT3 cars had survived practice, qualifying and warm-up to make it to the grid for the penultimate round of the 2014 British GT Championship at Brands Hatch. The Beechdean AMR Aston Martin stood proudly on pole as it awaited the start, and Andrew Howard led the 31-strong field away behind the Nissan Juke pace car. Would the title be settled this day or would we have to wait for the final race to see who would be crowned? All would soon be revealed.
As the Juke pulled off, Ahmad Al Harthy was looking aggressive and his start took him past the seemingly tentative Andrew Howard. Jon Minshaw was up to second by Druids, while Colin White took third from Jeff Smith. By the time the field reached Surtees, Howard had dropped to sixth and Marco Attard was right behind in seventh.
The Omani racer stayed out front for the next three laps, with Minshaw hanging on but coming under increased threat from White in the #38 MP Aston. But what was happening to the Beechdean Aston? By the end of Lap 3 the car had dropped to 12th, but wasn’t significantly off the pace – was this strategy or a problem? The answer came quickly, with Jonny Adam telling pit-commentator Jonny Palmer that the #1 Vantage was suffering with brake problems.
After four laps, the #4 Aston led by 0.569s, with White a further second back in third. Smith was fourth, with Jody Firth fifth in the #8 BMW and Attard up to sixth. The leader’s advantage increased by a couple of tenths on the next lap, but the Porsche was all over the Aston into Surtees , which was looking like a weak spot for the Vantage. A slight moment for Colin White, meanwhile, was enough to let Smith through into third.
As the lead fight continued, David Ashburn was doing a good job on his return to the seat to hold onto seventh in the #31 Porsche, with Gary Eastwood close behind in eighth. Howard, meanwhile, was back up to 11th and closing on the #29 Ferrari of Pasin Lathouras and the #21 Aston of Paul White.
But things were suddenly looking serious for Beechdean as the brake issue caused the reigning champion to spin down to 18th on Lap 10. Paul Bailey had earlier had a spin in the #28 HorsePower Racing, but worse was to follow for Colin White as the #38 Aston failed to come round at the end of the lap, with yellow flags being waved at Turn 7 (Sheene).
Minshaw continued to keep Al Harthy honest, keeping the gap below two seconds after 12 laps, while Smith was eight seconds further back in third but under intense pressure from the #8 BMW of Firth. Seven seconds further back, Marco Attard was at the head of a five-car queue. The MP Aston had by now been recovered from the gravel trap, but was now two laps down.
John Dhillon held 11th in the #13 AF Ferrari, and had the two Triple Eight BMWs of Derek Johnston and Lee Mowle in close company.
With 23 minutes having elapsed, the top two continued to pull away at the rate of two seconds per lap, with the #4 Aston having pulled out its advantage to almost four seconds. Howard, meanwhile, was beginning to claw back ground after his spin and took 15th from Chris Hoy on Lap 16. Humaid Al Masaoud also demoted the Olympian when he took the M-Sport Bentley past the Nissan GT-R a lap later.
As the first half-hour neared its conclusion, it was beginning to look like we’d have a replay of the first race from Snetterton, with Phil Keen chasing Michael Caine after the stops. But Jeff Smith had driven well up to this point and was poised to hand his Aston over to Rory Butcher in a very strong position. And what would Warren Hughes be able to do with the BMW if he took possession in fourth or even third place from Firth? Of course, a safety car between now and the pit window opening at 50 minutes could throw the whole thing into confusion.
In terms of the championship chase, should the current placings remain unaltered to the end then things would be very interesting going into the Donington finalé.
While the majority of the GT3 runners were lapping in the 1:30/1:31 range, the leader was able to stay comfortably in the 1:29s and indeed was able to post a fastest Sector 3 on Lap 21. Smith was also upping his pace to keep the persistent Firth in his mirrors, while further back, Dhillon was driving well to deny Johnston his place. A bigger threat to the Ferrari, however, was the Beechdean Aston, which had just separated Mowle from Johnston.
Lathouras posted a fastest lap on Lap 23 to keep the pressure on the eighth-placed Paul White, but suddenly there was drama as Derek Johnston’s BMW became stranded on the kerbs out of Clearways and with the marshals unable to push the car back onto the track, the Safety Car was scrambled to enable the car to be recovered.
While all this was happening, Andrew Howard entered the pits from the Cooper Straight, confirming suspicions of contact between #1 and #888. To his credit, the Beechdean boss later apologised to Johnston and accepted full blame for the incident.
Suddenly the whole complexion of the race was changed. Al Harthy’s hard work had been undone, and with the pit-window now so close (under ten minutes), Nick Tandy was suddenly very much in the race, assuming of course that David Ashburn would get to the pitlane still in seventh.
Johnston was recovered from the doldrums with 43 minutes having elapsed and the BMW called into its garage for a few moments before rejoining the race. As this was happening, John Dhillon’s Ferrari crawled to a stop on the Cooper Straight – all drive having disappeared – at which point the race went green again!
Dhillon climbed out of the Ferrari, and the race immediately went into caution mode again.
The order was now 4, 63, 5, 8, 79, 31, 18, 21, 29, 6, 22, 88, 17, 80, 3, 28, 23, 38, 1 and 888. The Safety Car would be in at the end of Lap 30, but next time round the pit-window would be open.
Hector Lester was the first to head for the pits, but he had come in too soon and would have to go round again.
Once the window officially entered, Firth was the first to stop and was followed by Attard, Mowle, Al Masaoud and Lester (again). The #79 BMW would have to serve an extra 20s.
Minshaw ended a very good stint a lap later, leaving the two Oman Astons in the lead, albeit separated by nine seconds. Hoy followed him in and handed over to Jann Mardenborough as Alexander Sims took the Ecurie Ecosse back into the race. Warren Hughes, however, looked to be in trouble as the #8 BMW limped round Surtees and onto the GP loop seemingly in limp-home mode. Moments later, yellows at Sheene indicated that the car had stopped. It would later emerge that a wheel had come adrift.
Smith finished his best stint of his BGT career on Lap 32, while David Ashburn stayed out a further lap before pitting from second.
Sims set a new fastest lap of 1:27.356 on his first flier, while we still awaited the pit visits of Al Harthy, Eastwood, David Jones and Colin White. The leader made his stop after 58 minutes, but the #18 Ferrari and #22 McLaren stayed out.
Sixth on the road was Nick Tandy in the #31 Porsche, with Matt Griffin seventh in the #29 Ferrari, Tom Onslow-Cole eighth in the #21 Aston, Alex MacDowall ninth in the #6 Aston and Sims tenth in the #79 BMW.
Eastwood and Sims became the last of the stoppers on Lap 37, which left Phil Keen leading from Michael Caine by 4.763s.
The new order with 55 minutes to go was 63, 4, 5, 31, 29, 21, 6, 79, 88, 22, 80, 18, 3, 23, 28, 1, 38, 17, 8, 13 and 888.
Steven Kane had just posted the M-Sport Bentley’s fastest lap of the race when the car failed to appear out of Clearways. Another retirement? Yes indeed – gearbox failure being blamed.
With 40 laps complete, the gap between first and second came down to 2.117s, while further back Sims set the fastest lap of the race – 1:27.212. Tandy, though, was just a few hundredths slower and he was ten seconds and four positions further up the road.
While we waited for a pattern to emerge among the top four, things were closer in the fight for fifth between Griffin and TOC (0.552s) and in the fight for 10th between Godfrey Jones and Adam Carroll (0.269s).
On Lap 44, Tandy overcame Butcher’s Aston and now faced a nine-second deficit to Caine in second with just over 45 minutes remaining.
With 40 to go, the gap from first to second was 3.494 and from second to third it was 5.642. A Trackspeed 1-2 was looking more and more likely, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen that. In fact, it’s worth noting that Tandy never got to even drive in a BGT race longer than an hour in 2013, so perhaps the long layoff has been good for David Ashburn.
The fight at this point was between Griffin and TOC, with the Strata21 Aston all over the AF Ferrari round Druids. The Irish racer hung on, though, and the fight continued round the GP loop. Not far behind was the #79 BMW, having got past the #6 Aston. The only other BMW still in the race was the #88 of Ryan Ratcliffe, which was running strongly in ninth.
On Lap 52, the Preci-Spark McLaren made a short, if unscheduled, stop and dropped to 13th behind the Rosso Verde Ferrari of Benny Simonsen. The cause of the stop was a rear puncture following suspected wheel-to-wheel contact.
After 55 laps, the gaps between the top three were equal at around 3.5s. Rory Butcher was keeping in touch with the cars ahead in fourth, but had a deficit of around four seconds. 30 minutes remained, however, and there was still plenty that could happen in this race. And we had evidence of this almost immediately, as Onslow-Cole had a moment at Graham Hill Bend a lap later and dropped from sixth to eighth. This left Sims half-a-second adrift of Griffin and gave Marco Attard a few more championship points.
Tandy continued to close on Caine and the gap between the two was just over a second at the start of Lap 59, even though the Aston was still only four seconds off the lead. How long could the 2012 champion resist?
The answer was just one more lap, as ‘Spotty’ (the car, not the driver) took the inside line into Druids and was through.
A fight for ninth had also developed by this point, with Carroll having closed to within a second of Ratcliffe’s BMW. And Simonsen was closing on Mardenborough for 11th. Griffin, though, was holding onto fifth despite Sims’ best efforts.
As the race entered the final 15 minutes, we had the unusual situation of two Trackspeed cars and two Oman Racing cars closing on each other, but with any change of position being detrimental to the championship hopes of both teams’ leading car. This would almost certainly mean that Tandy would hold back from a challenge on Keen, but would that be the case for Butcher and Caine?
Meanwhile, Carroll had got by Ratcliffe for ninth.
There was even a race for 15th, with Jonny Adam closing on Tom Sharp in the battle of the delayed Astons. This was, however, purely for pride, with any hopes of points for either car being very remote indeed.
Matt Griffin’s heroic defence of fifth in the 75kg-heavier came to a close on Lap 71 as Sims finally found a way through across the line and held on in the run up Hailwoods.
But there was suddenly consternation in the pits as the #63 Porsche of Keen failed to cross the line at the end of Lap 72 and was indeed crawling down the pitlane with a blown rear left.
This let Tandy through into the lead and promoted both Oman Astons to the podium places. Rory Butcher had designs on second, though, so things still weren’t settled.
The final few seconds on the clock ticked away on the 77th lap and Nick Tandy completed a famous victory for he and Trackspeed boss David Ashburn soon afterwards. Eight seconds later the two Oman cars approached the line – Butcher to the outside and Caine hugging the wall – but the #4 hung on by just 0.161s.
“We lucked in a lot with the timing of the Safety Cars, but it was the perfect race for us,” said Tandy. “First and foremost, Dave drove amazingly well – the best I’ve seen him while I’ve been at Trackspeed – and all the more so when you consider that he hasn’t been behind the wheel for almost 12 months! But the team gave us a great car and we had a very good stop, so I’m really happy.”
Was there any chance of him making a move for the lead before Keen had his puncture? “No, not at all. We had discussed before the race what we would do if we were the lead car at that point, but I had already radioed the team to tell Phil – once I was past the Aston – that he was okay. I was just getting ready for the formation finish, but then his tyre let go along the back straight! I don’t know if he hit debris or something, but it was an unusual place for it to happen.”
Jeff Smith, meanwhile, was very happy with his first podium finish in British GT; “The tyres were a bit unpredictable – going away and then coming back – but I had good pace and drove well,” he began. “I lost loads of time trying to keep Jody Firth behind me, particularly when the yellows were flying in Sector 3 and he’d close right up; but that was a really good race!”
Sims’ efforts brought the Ecurie Ecosse BMW home to fourth, while Griffin took fifth for AF Corse, just 0.157s ahead of the #6 PGF-Kinfaun Aston of Alex MacDowall. Tom Onslow-Cole was a further 13s adrift in seventh, suggesting his earlier slip-up may have been the result of an issue, while Adam Carroll was close behind in eighth in the #18 FF Corse Ferrari. Phil Keen, meanwhile, had the smallest of consolations at the end by taking ninth from the Triple Eight BMW of Ryan Ratcliffe.
“That was the hardest-fought fifth place I’ve ever had,” said Griffin. “I made a small mistake which allowed Sims past, but it was brilliant racing against top guys like him and Tom Onslow-Cole – we were racing at top speed, just millimetres apart but with absolutely no contact – and I really enjoyed it! Real GT racing!”
Jann Mardenborough held off Benny Simonsen’s challenge to take 11th for RJN, while the Preci-Spark McLaren, the HorsePower Racing, MP and Beechdean Astons and the United Autosports Audi were the final classified runners.
What this all meant was that Marco Attard left Brands Hatch with one hand on the title trophy as the chase came down to a straight fight between he and the Oman Racing duo of Ahmad Al Harthy and Michael Caine – Attard on 148.5 and Al Harthy/Caine on 120. The Aston racers would thus have to win the final race at Donington in two weeks time and then hope that Attard finished no higher than seventh in order to take the spoils.
But stranger things have happened!
Mark Howson
