GT3 PRO Qualifying
Seb Morris narrowly delivered the second pole-position in four races for Team Parker Racing today at Oulton Park. The Marford (near Wrexham) racer, and former Caterham F1 Academy star left it until the final three minutes of the PRO session to shoot to the top of the times, to give he and team-mate Rick Parfitt Jnr a strong chance of a first Bentley win in British GT.
Rob Bell, the McLaren factory ace, held the provisional pole time for the majority of the session after Ross Gunn’s Beechdean-AMR Vantage held an early advantage. It was a relatively straightforward qualifying session with few able to challenge for pole, and it became clear it was a McLaren vs Bentley shootout for pole.
It finished with Morris getting the better of Bell by 0.031s and the pair 0.2s ahead of the first of Barwell’s Lamborghinis, with Phil Keen (1:33.875) at the wheel.
Factory Aston Martin racer Ross Gunn’s V12 Vantage (1:33.889) was under a tenth of a second behind Keen, and was just 0.034s ahead of former mentor Jonny Adam (1:33.923) in the quickest of the two TF Sport Vantages.
Lap record holder at Oulton, Adam Carroll, was sixth quickest after his fastest time was deleted (having been deemed to have broken track limits), and did well to get another quick time in (1:34.128).
Jody Fannin lapped the Oulton circuit in a 1:34.282, narrowly ahead of the second TF Sport Aston (1:34.307) of former British GT champion, Jon Barnes, almost a second quicker than his 2015 qualifying time.
Further back it was again a challenging qualifying session for the Tolman Motorsport Ginetta G55s. Mike Simpson led the charge with a 1:34.828 which gave him ninth place, and was almost half a second slower than his time last year in a G55 GT3, despite a 10kg weight drop since the last round and the benefit of using Pirelli tyres in 2016 over Avons.
It was a similar story for the lead GT3 BMW of Joe Osborne who finished up tenth with a 1:34.922 over half a second slower than the fastest Z4 last year (Phil Keen – 1:34.392) and around 0.3s slower than his own best last year. Again SRO made changes here since Rockingham, a 30kg diet for the Z4. Speaking to Osborne after qualifying, he didn’t have a bad lap and confessed to making no mistakes, so it does appear that older GT3 cars can’t be given parity against their newer rivals.
N.B. For clarity, SRO added 25kg to 2016 spec Astons since Rockingham (final weight 1315 kg). Series organisers have called out the 2015 spec Vantage with its own balance of performance too, which sees a 15kg difference between the two specs, running at a final weight of 1305 kg.
Elsewhere the Team Parker Bentley has had 15kg added to make it weigh 1315kg and with minor modifications to its turbo boost. The Lamborghinis are 10kg lighter, and the McLaren 650s GT3 remains unchanged in terms of both boost and weight since the previous British GT race.
GT3 AM Qualifying
Barwell Motorsport pair Jon Minshaw and Liam Griffin had improved fortunes at the third British GT Championship weekend of 2016. The British duo finished the GT3 AM session on top, making the front row for the first of Monday’s two 60-minute sprint races an all Lamborghini affair.
Just 0.039s separated the Huracans at the front of the field, but the GT3 AM qualifying session was by no means a close run thing, with Minshaw leading the session for the most part after championship leader, Derek Johnston’s TF Sport Aston Martin had held the lead after the opening laps.
Johnston didn’t manage to secured third though, that fell to Rick Parfitt Jnr in the Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3. ‘Parff’ nicked third in the final two minutes of the ten minute session with a 1:35.680 tour of the 2.6-mile Cheshire track. Johnston will start Monday’s first race from fourth (1:35.952), just a tenth of a second ahead of Alastair McCaig’s Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 650s GT3 (1:36.149).
Sharing row three with the McLaren is reigning champion, Andrew Howard. The Beechdean-AMR owner was 0.3s off McCaig with a 1:36.489. Howard will be looking to pick up where he left off last year, where he and then team-mate Jonny Adam won the second race of the 2015 weekend.
Optimum Motorsport’s Will Moore repeated the aggregate feat of Rockingham, taking a second-successive seventh place start for the glorious Audi R8 LMS GT3. Early provisional pole-sitter Mark Farmer finished eighth in the second TF Sport Vantage, 1.3s off pole with a 1:36.891.
Lee Mowle will be unhappy with ninth on the grid for his efforts on Saturday afternoon. Pace wise, he beat the best Z4 time of 2015 in GT3 AM qualifying, but a lot of this can be attributed to the Pirelli rubber. The relative pace of the Z4 and older GT3s to the front running ‘next-generation’ GT3s is a concern and flagged by us at the season media day.
Race action on Monday begins at 11:15 BST and the second British GT race of the weekend gets underway at 15:30. The races are not televised, but as ever, we’ll bring you live reports straight after the races have happened.
