Snetterton this weekend was Fulvio Mussi’s first-ever appearance in the British GT Championship, stepping in for Fox Motorsport Ginetta team boss Paul McNeilly alongside Jamie Stanley. But he marked his arrival in fine style in race two by winning in increasingly torrential rain in a race that was red-flagged with 11 minutes to go due to monsoon conditions.
Meanwhile, fourth place was in the end was enough for Beechdean Aston Martin’s teenage duo Ross Gunn and Jamie Chadwick to be crowned GT4 drivers’ champions for 2015 with a round to spare. Chadwick is both the first female and the youngest-ever driver to win a British GT crown – taking the latter record from Jonny Cocker – while Gunn takes the title in his first year of GT racing, having made the switch from BRDC F4 over the winter.
It was already raining quite heavily when proceedings got underway, so the race director gave the field two green-flag laps to get used to the conditions before the safety car pulled in and the lights went out.
After a lap’s racing, Brands Hatch winner Luke Davenport had got the second-place-qualifying #56 Tolman Ginetta into the lead ahead of polesitter and race-one winner Gavan Kershaw in the #77 ISSY Lotus. The Hethel car wasn’t liking the wet conditions, however and Kershaw would slip to fifth by the time the pit window rolled around.
Third after lap one was race-one podium finisher Dennis Strandberg in the #61 Academy Motorsport Aston Martin, ahead of Ross Gunn in the #407 Beechdean car and eventual race winner Stanley in the #48 Ginetta.
Stanley was soon on the move, however, getting up to fourth ahead of Gunn and then profiting from Strandberg losing several places in the #61 to move up to third. He then overhauled the embattled Kershaw for second and moved into position about seven seconds behind the leader Davenport.
Rob Garofall was having a good stint in the University Of Bolton Ginetta and both he and James Nash in the #53 Ultratek Lotus got past Kershaw next. Nash made a canny move that saw him get ahead of Garofall as they both overhauled Kershaw, putting the Ultratek car third as the pit window approached.
With pro drivers abroad, most of the front-running cars didn’t pit immediately when the window for stopping opened. Immediately after the stops, there was bad news for the #61 Aston when, shortly after taking over from Strandberg, Will Moore had a spin at Coram and ended up in the tyres – he was unhurt, but it was race over.
Elsewhere, the #77 Lotus’ race went from bad to worse when Yusuf had to come back to the pits shortly after joining to serve a drive-through penalty for pitlane speeding.
Once the order settled down post-stops, the Tolman Ginetta was leading, with David Pattison having taken over from Davenport and now running ahead of Mussi in the Fox car.
Championship contender Graham Johnson briefly made it a Ginetta 1-2-3 in the PMW/Optimum car, but (crucially for the outcome of the title) he spun and lost three places at Riches, dropping behind both the Century Motorsport car of Aleksander Schjerpen and the title-contending Beechdean Aston, now being driven by Chadwick.
With 15 minutes to go, Mussi found a way past Pattinson to take the lead, but it was only a couple of minutes later when Pattinson’s Ginetta became one of several cars to aquaplane off the circuit, indicating to the race director the time was right to call an early halt to proceedings for safety reasons.
The result was declared at the end of 18 laps for the GT4 leader, leaving Mussi and Stanley with a 7.8-second lead over Schjerpen and Fredrik Blomstedt, who were themselves 37.2 seconds clear of third-place finishers Davenport and Pattison.
Chadwick and Gunn’s safe fourth place was enough to secure the class title and they finished ahead of erstwhile contenders Johnson and Robinson, with the University Of Bolton crew of Garofall and Anna Walewska rounding out the top six.
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