2 Seas Motorsport’s #18 Mercedes AMG GT3 will start tomorrow’s British GT Silverstone 500 from pole position, after Kevin Tse’s dominant Q1 performance laid the foundations for Maximilian Goetz to finish the job in Qualifying this afternoon.
The pair’s 3:55.976 combined lap was proved to be just over a tenth quicker than Barwell’s #78 Lamborghini, which came closest and took the second spot on the front row.
Interestingly, across both classes, neither of the pole-winning cars set outright fastest times – those honours and new lap records went to Sandy Mitchell and Gordie Mutch – but their driver crews were still sufficiently quick to land premium grid slots for the British GT Championship’s blue riband, three-hour race.
Mitchell’s banzai lap of 1:56.602s reduced his own 2022 benchmark by just over a tenth and left the Barwell Lamborghini he shares with Alex Martin just shy of pole.
Century’s 2023 500-winning BMW shared by Darren Leung and Dries Vanthoor will start third, while Shaun Balfe and Adam Smalley (Garage 59) were the leading Silver-Am contenders in fourth.
The #27 McLaren GT3 EVO from Optimum Motorsport, shared by Mark Radcliffe and factory driver Tom Gamble, completed the top five.
It was an even better performance from Optimum in GT4. Zac Meakin and last year’s class winner Jack Brown combined to put the #90 Artura GT4 on class pole with a 4:17.931.
The fight for the top spot boiled down to a two-horse race between Optimum’s McLaren and CMR’s Ginetta. But it was ultimately Brown and Meakin who prevailed after both narrowly beat Stuart Middleton and Freddie Tomlinson in their respective sessions. A combined 0.237s separated the crews after Q2.
The consistency of Forsetti’s Mikey Porter and Jamie Day was rewarded with third overall – three places ahead of their early title rivals Charles Dawson and Seb Morris (Team Parker Racing) who start alongside Pro-Am pole winners Kavi Jundu and Daniel Vaughan (Toyota Gazoo Racing UK).
Unfortunately, the total number of starters for tomorrow’s race has been reduced to 41 following two incidents involving GT3 class cars ahead of Qualifying.
The first withdrawal was RJN’s #2 McLaren GT3 EVO after an incident in Testing for Simon Watts. The second was Sky Tempesta’s Ferrari 296 GT3, following a Free Practice 1 off for Alex West.
Tomorrow’s three-hour race is set to get underway at 12:30 local time. You can stream it live, for free, on the GT World YouTube channel.
Images courtesy of British GT/JEP
