Barwell Motorsports’ championship-leading #63 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 will start tomorrow’s British GT race from Donington Park from pole position after Rob and Ricky Collard set a combined 2:53.232 in qualifying this afternoon.
The duo edged out 2 Seas Motorsports’ Max Goetz and Kevin Tse, who ended up just three hundredths off with their combined time in the #18 Mercedes.
Barwell’s other Lamborghini – the #78 driven by Sandy Mitchell and Alex Martin – which sits second in the Drivers’ standings, will start third after another strong Saturday performance that saw them come within a tenth of pole.
They will line up on the second row, three places ahead of Silver-Am pole winners Matt Topham and Josh Rowledge (Blackthorn).
Q1 initially played out between Barwell’s team-mates and title rivals as Martin and then Collard occupied top spot. They looked to have secured a provisional one-two but with moments remaining Tse strung together three PB sectors to overhaul both Lamborghinis and hand Götz a slender 0.023s head start over Collard Jnr.
Mike Price maintained his encouraging recent qualifying form by lapping 0.3s slower than Tse in Greystone GT’s Mercedes-AMG, while both of Blackthorn’s Aston Martins – headed by Topham – completed the top six before the Pro co-drivers climbed aboard.
The action was no less frenetic as the leading contenders again duked it out, but this time Collard was able to best Götz by half a tenth to overturn his starting deficit and claim pole by 0.036s.
Mitchell was fractionally quicker than both of them but ultimately fell 0.088s shy of pole on the combined results. Nevertheless, and unlike both front row starters, the #78 Huracan serves no Compensation Time tomorrow.
Fourth place was consolidated by Callum Macleod who completed Greystone’s tidy day’s work by qualifying fourth – the team’s best-ever British GT grid slot.
Behind, Max Hesse set two fastest laps of all, and within 0.012s of each other, to move the RAM BMW he shares with John Ferguson from eighth to fifth. Their promotion came at Blackthorn’s expense with Topham/Rowledge and Giacomo Petrobelli/Jonny Adam dropping to sixth and seventh.
Garage 59’s championship chasing Shaun Balfe and Adam Smalley have work to do from eighth after their McLaren picked up a puncture in Q2. The team’s other entry featuring Morgan Tillbrook and Marcus Clutton plus Optimum’s Mark Radcliffe and Tom Gamble completed the top 10.
GT4 was closer still, Forsetti’s Mikey Porter and Jamie Day pipping their main title rivals Jack Brown and Zac Meakin (Optimum) by only two hundredths.
The sessions also saw the DTO Ginetta mount a strong challenge. But Aston Millar and Freddie Tomlinson will ultimately head up a second row that also features Pro-Am championship leaders Marc Warren and Will Orton in Forsetti’s second Aston Martin.
The fastest time of all elevated Matt Nicoll-Jones, Will Moore and Academy’s Mustang to fifth.
Tomorrow’s two-hour race is set to get underway at 13:00 local time.
Images: Paul Foster
