Here we are again. For the third season running, Donington Park will be the venue where the title race is decided; but whereas the previous two encounters have presented multiple permutations for the ultimate outcome, in 2014 it has come down to just two cars and three drivers.
Marco Attard holds all the aces going into the tenth and final race of the season and enjoys a 28.5-point lead over Ahmad Al Harthy and Michael Caine (technically, Alexander Sims is second in the standings, but there is no possibility of him landing the title). This means that only a win for the #4 Oman Racing Aston will do, and even then they will need the #79 Ecurie Ecosse BMW Z4 of Attard to finish no higher than seventh. This is by no means an impossible scenario, but equally the evidence suggests that this is far from likely. However, it wasn’t looking likely that Caine and partner Daniele Perfetti would take the title going into the final race of 2012, but they did.
The sun had yet to break through when the first Free Practice session began at 09:50 on Saturday morning, but the forecast was for a general brightening and a dry weekend; and the weather certainly seemed milder than the usual late-September/early-October date for the fixture normally produces. Indeed, a quick look back through the archives reveals the fact that this is the earliest the season has ended since at least 2002.
31 cars appeared on the final entry, with the #45 GT4 BMW being the only absentee from the provisional list published earlier in the week. Also notable by their absence were the IDL-CWS team of Colin White and Tom Sharp, who previously raced a GT3 Ginetta G55 before switching to an Aston Martin Vantage at Brands Hatch – we await news on their future plans – and the HorsePower Racing Aston of Paul Bailey and Andy Schulz (Bailey celebrating a significant wedding anniversary, we understand). But the series was able to welcome back Ron Johnson and Piers Johnson in the #19 FF Corse Ferrari 458; “The intention was to take off the year and focus on testing,” said Ron, “and I did spend a day testing with Triple Eight as part of their TEDD programme, which was very useful. I’ll also be testing an Aston in October, and thinking about it I should really try a Porsche as well, I suppose. But the Ferrari is a very nice car – it seems to have been built specifically for fat old men like me – and we had a good weekend in it at Silverstone in the GT Cup recently, so we thought we’d have a go here.”
This is currently a one-off for the non-related duo, as the evaluation process for a 2015 programme continues, with the car being the only one of the 40 Ferraris prepared and run by Anthony Cheshire’s FF Corse actually owned by the team.
The fastest time of the session went to the #31 Trackspeed Porsche 997 GT3 R of Brands-victors David Ashburn and Nick Tandy – the Porsche factory driver setting a 1:29.482 – but 16 other cars were within a second of ‘Spotty’.
Just a few hundredths behind in second was the #23 United Autosports Audi of Mark Patterson and Matt Bell. This car and duo won last year’s race at Donington and have a point to prove after a very disappointing season. More significantly, it would appear that this is Patterson’s final event before he hangs up the racing helmet, and so the popular South African would like to go out on a high.
Benny Simonsen almost pulled off a repeat of his Brands Hatch feat of setting the quickest FP1 time on his first time out on the circuit – in this case the Donington Park GP layout being the novelty – but the #3 Rosso Verde Ferrari he shares with Hector Lester ended up fourth after a late improvement from Jonny Adam in the #1 Beechdean AMR Aston. He and fellow factory AMR driver Alex MacDowall at one point set identical laptimes, but the Scot’s last lap took him a third of a second clear of the Cumbrian in the #6 PGF-Kinfaun Aston, which ended up 11th quickest.
Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen again looked strong in the #63 Trackspeed Porsche in fifth – Minshaw’s times certainly looking to be among the quickest of the Gentlemen races – and they too will be looking to win after being robbed of victory by that blow-out at Brands. Just two-thousandths of a second behind the Porsche was the #888 Triple Eight BMW Z4 of Derek Johnston and Joe Osborne. Both drivers know the circuit very well and go quickly round it, while the Z4 seems well suited to the track. Warren Hughes looked set to make a significant improvement from 18th late in the session in the #8 Triple Eight Z4 he shares with Jody Firth after setting green and purple sectors, but traffic caused him to abort the lap. He would, however, go quicker before the end to improve to 13th.
In the hunt for the overall title, it was advantage Ecurie Ecosse, with Marco Attard and Alexander Sims seventh quickest on 1:29.984 in the #79 BMW Z4, while the #4 Oman Racing Aston of Ahmad Al Harthy and Michael Caine only 16th on 1:30.436. Interestingly though, the fastest times of all four drivers would leave the Aston ahead of the BMW were they to be repeated in qualifying, when the Pro & Am times are added together to set the grid – 3:01.255 for #4 and 3:01.499 for #79.
Gavan Kershaw set the fastest GT4 time of the session in the #79 ISSY Racing Lotus Evora, despite the car missing a large chunk of it after driveshaft failure stranded the car at the end of the pitlane, with a 1:37.863 being 0.340s quicker than Bradley Ellis’ best in the #46 Twisted Team Parker Ginetta G55. Third was the Team Parker Racing Porsche, with Dan Cammish setting the car’s best of 1:38.466 midway through the session.
The second session saw the Ferraris become more prominent, but things weren’t properly sorted until the final ten minutes, when a whole raft of quick times shuffled the final order ahead of the afternoon’s qualifying session.
Ollie Hancock was an early leader in the #18 FF Corse Ferrari in which he was subbing for Adam Carroll, but would ultimately slip to 15th.
Once again, Nick Tandy was the quickest driver out there, lowering the #31 Porsche’s time in stages to 1:28.912; and this looked to be unassailable as the gap to the second-placed sister-car of Minshaw and Keen was more than half-a-second with ten minutes to go. But then we saw improvements from Sims in the #79 BMW, Steven Kane in the M-Sport Bentley – the team looking to emulate their win in the Pirelli World Challenge at Utah the previous evening – and Jonny Adam in the #1 Beechdean Aston, to go fourth, third and second, respectively. Suddenly, Tandy’s advantage was only 0.047s, but it was enough to retain P1.
With the quicker times set earlier in the session it was the Team Parker garage that had the best of things in second Free Practice. Dan Cammish and Barrie Baxter headed the GT4 timing screen, Cammish having pedalled the #44 Porsche around nearly a second quicker than the #46 Twisted Team Parker Ginetta of Adrian Barwick and Bradley Ellis.
The #77 ISSY Racing Lotus Evora found some comfort after its earlier driveshaft issues to post a strong third fastest time, 0.4s ahead of the #49 TF Sport car, this the faster of the two Aston Martins. The Fox Motorsport Ginetta was just a shade off this to round off the top five.
The Century Ginettas had a fairly unremarkable session, the #42 Parfitt / Oliphant showing little more than midfield pace, its sister #43 entry struggling to get off the bottom of the order despite some sector improvements. Wylie and Giddings meanwhile seemed happy to continue the #407 Beechdean car’s steady bedding in for what could be their big weekend.
MH/ML
