It’s bright and sunny here and following yesterday’s changeable conditions we’re hoping the conditions continue for this afternoon’s 2 hour championship decider.
In GT3 Phil Keen went quickest in warm up, the distinctive #63 Demon Tweeks BMW Z4 circulating in 1:29.697, a second off its qualifying time. Mike Simpson’s Ginetta showed a good turn of speed just shy of this on 1:29.756, an indication of what could have been had the car not been beached in qualifying. The #32 car will start from the back as a result, but this suggests a strong recovery drive.
Jon Barnes’s 22GT car was third, the first of the Aston Martins, with Andrew Howard’s championship contending Beechdean car fourth. Defending champ Marco Attard was a little way back, but this was only the warm up.
The big story though was the accident that looks to have taken the #12 VonRyan McLaren out of the event. Coming into McLeans Salih Yoluc seemed to take too much kerb, the car pitching hard into the barrier. One driver source observed that the young Turkish driver had hit the throttle in an attempt to power out of the situation, but that this had only made things worse. Yoluc is OK, though rather shaken up, and declined to comment to us on the incident. The damage looks terminal and this of course is not the first time this entry has been in the news.
In GT4 there was no such controversy, Oz Yusuf leading the lap times before the Lotus Evora was demoted to third near the end of the 10 minute session. The AMD Porsche of Jake Hill at 1:37.840 was quickest, marginally ahead of Ross Gunn’s #407 Beechdean Aston Martin second.
Graham Johnson (#50 Ginetta): “The Lotus is extremely fast so on a level playing field I don’t think we have an answer, we’ll need some good luck. With the red flag in my qualifying session it meant my best lap was 1.4 seconds down on what it should have been due to having to pass traffic and without that we would have been third on the grid. I can definitely get back up to second and bring it in from there. I think the Lotus will be gone, but of course we want to beat them to finish second in the championship and first in Pro-Am. I had no dry running at all yesterday and I’ve never driven the Donington GP circuit in the dry.“
Ian Stinton: (#73 Ginetta): “I had a baby this year, so that kyboshed any plans for racing really! I love British GT and I have been doing it for a long time. Coming back I’d say it is better organised than previously, properly professional and a really good series. I definitely want to be back in it, probably in GT4 and probably staying with the Ginetta ‘family’. Ideally I want to get my licence signed, the dream is still to do Le Mans and Nathan Freke is in the same position, so I’ve got to keep racing. I’m struggling a bit with GT4. In the GT3 Ginetta, which I still have, you have to instantly generate huge pressure in the brakes, and I keep doing it in this car but all it does it locks all 4 wheels! I’ve only had 20 minutes of dry running in it which doesn’t help either. But we are here to enjoy ourselves, the car is nice to drive and it is nice to be racing with Nathan in such a nice team.”
Adam Christodoulou (#42 Porsche): “It has been tough with the weather conditions but we are starting fourth. Henry [Hassid] had to learn the car and the circuit in changing conditions so he did a pretty incredible job in qualifying. I’ve driven the car on the Nordschleife but it has never ran on Avon tyres so that is the big thing for us this weekend. The car has come a long way this year and reliability is not a problem. We had to use the dry 10 minute warm-up to do a few set-up changes and hopefully we’ll be a little bit better again for the race.”
Jamie Stanley (#48 Ginetta): “Paul [McNeilly] got shafted by the red in qualifying, I was second fastest in my session which I was happy with, but it wasn’t enough to move us any higher than sixth on the grid. We’ve got 20 seconds of penalty from Snetterton and that will hurt us, so we are hoping for a Safety Car to bring that all back together and then we should be OK because having a lighter car will play to our hands. The Aston Martins are quick but I am not sure they will be able to keep that pace for two hours.”
ML / PS
