2 Seas’ Kevin Tse and Maximilian Goetz will start British GT’s annual Spa day from pole position after overturning Barwell’s initial advantage in qualifying earlier this afternoon.
The Mercedes-AMG lines up alongside Ricky and Rob Collard who topped a first 10-minute session featuring the kind of conditions – soaking at La Source, dry everywhere else – that are synonymous with the iconic Ardennes circuit. Blackthorn’s Giacomo Petrobelli and Jonny Adam completed the top-four.
Q1 was largely fought between Rob Collard, Tse and Petrobelli whose pace throughout the first 10-minute session suggested Blackthorn had the car to beat.
However, all three of the Aston Martin’s laps were compromised by traffic to a greater or lesser extent, so it was ultimately Collard who ended up with a handy 0.335s advantage over 2 Seas’ #18 Mercedes-AMG which featured amongst the top three throughout.
Petrobelli, meanwhile, finished 0.024s down on Tse and two tenths clear of Miguel Ramos whose solo-driven Garage 59 McLaren dropped to the tail of the order once Q2 commenced.
Barwell’s other Lamborghini driven by Alex Martin and Morgan Tillbrook’s McLaren completed the provisional top six.
La Source was still a little damp when Q2 got underway, but that was no protection against a new GT3 lap record which tumbled immediately thanks to Goetz. It would later pass to Raffaele Marciello before a 2m15.624s settled that particular contest in Tom Gamble and Optimum’s favour.
But on combined times that was still only enough to leave the McLaren eighth overall and three seconds down on 2 Seas’ Mercedes-AMG, which overturned its initial deficit to Barwell. Just like his co-driver, Goetz was ever-present towards the top of the individual lap charts and ultimately finished with a 0.5s advantage over Ricky Collard whose late improvement moved the Lamborghini ahead of Petrobelli and Jonny Adam.
The latter ended the session beached on the Campus kerbs but had done enough beforehand to consolidate third place.
Ramos slipping to the bottom of the order meant Sandy Mitchell took fourth in the car he shares with fellow championship leader Martin, while Josh Rowledge underlined the Blackthorn Aston Martin’s pace by moving up to fifth at the expense of Garage 59’s Tillbrook and Marcus Clutton. The Vantage was also fastest of the Silver-Am contenders.
2 Seas’ other Mercedes-AMG starts seventh in the hands of Ian Loggie and Phil Keen – one place ahead of the rapid Gamble who shares Optimum’s McLaren with Mark Radcliffe.
Meanwhile, GT4’s qualifying session was cut short before the end of Q3 when Ravi Ramyead’s Century BMW crashed at Raidillon, causing substantial barrier damage.
The grid order was therefore set from the Pre-Qualifying result, aggregated to account for both drivers’ fastest lap times.
DTO Motorsport pairing Freddie Tomlinson and Stuart Middleton will start tomorrow’s race from pole position after GT4 qualifying had to be halted due to barrier damage, with the grid instead being set by the times from the day’s earlier Pre-Qualifying session.
Century Motorsport’s #71 BMW M4 in the hands of Ravi Ramyead crashed at Raidillon with five minutes of the first qualifying segment remaining. Ramyead received assistance in getting out of the car and was later transferred to a local hospital for precautionary scans following the incident. The team has since confirmed that he will not be participating in the race tomorrow following the incident.
The resulting barrier damage meant it was not possible to resume the remainder of qualifying, with the grid instead being determined by the aggregated times of each driver pairing from Pre-Qualifying earlier in the day.
Tomlinson and Middleton set the fastest combined lap time, handing the DTO Ginetta pole for the second successive event.
Forsetti Motorsport’s Marc Warren and Will Orton will start alongside them in their Aston Martin and on Pro-Am class pole, with the CWS Racing Ginetta of Colin White and Tom Holland taking third.
Harry George and Luca Hopkinson will start fourth in their RAM Racing Mercedes-AMG, with Ian Gough/Tom Wrigley’s Century BMW and Ian Duggan/Gordie Mutch’s Mahiki Racing Lotus Emira making up row three. Championship leaders Jack Brown and Zac Meakin will start ninth.
Tomorrow’s two-hour British GT race at Spa is set to get underway at 13:00 local time in Belgium.
Image courtesy of British GT
