21-year-old Morgan Short, son of former British GT champion Martin Short, is set to make his British GT debut at the penultimate round of the 2023 season at Brands Hatch.
Short will compete in the GT4 class with Raceway in a Ginetta G56 alongside team regular Tom Holland.
This will not be Short’s first GT racing experience in the UK. Earlier this year he scored an overall GT Cup victory at the same venue driving a National Motorsport Academy-prepared Mosler MT900 Super GT. The car last raced 13 years ago but was still sufficiently quick in Morgan and his younger brother Marcus’ hands to beat the series’ GT3 contingent.
“I’m really looking forward to stepping up to race in British GT at Brands Hatch 20 years after my father helped Rollcentre win the title at the very same track (below, pictured at the Brands test day with Tom Herridge),” he said.
“This will be my first time in a Ginetta GT4 but I’m looking forward to learning from Tom and the team to try and help us get a good result. It will be a steep learning curve but I’m really looking forward to the challenge!”
Morgan competing in British GT adds to the family’s significant heritage in the championship. His father and his Rollcentre Racing team were a stalwart of the championship in the early 2000s with TVR and Noble and latterly was responsible for building, selling and servicing Mosler race cars for more than 20 years – swell as racing them with no little success.
Back in 2003, Tom Herridge won the British GT drivers’ crown at Brands Hatch driving an MT900R after another Mosler – featuring current GT3 title contender Shaun Balfe – was controversially punted into retirement at Paddock Hill Bend. Balfe’s chief engineer that season was Alan Mugglestone who by sheer coincidence now works for Raceway and will engineer Morgan.
Short Snr helped Herridge seal the 2003 title by winning at Brands, where a one-year-old Morgan appeared in his father’s arms on the podium!
“It’s funny how things turn out!” said Martin Short. “Alan [Mugglestone] was with Balfe in 2003 and none too pleased about the incident that robbed his driver of the title. It was a hard-fought campaign that naturally created tension between the Mosler teams.
“Alan and I are now really good friends. It’s a nice coincidence that he’ll engineer Morgan 20 years after his old man helped pinch the title from under Jamie Derbyshire and Shaun Balfe’s noses, and at the same circuit too!”
The penultimate round of this season’s Intelligent Money British GT Championship at Brands Hatch is set to take place on September 9th and 10th.
Featured image courtesy of British GT
