Optimum Motorsport driver and McLaren GT3 Junior star Mikey Porter reflected on his last-minute call-up to the British GT Championship’s Spa-Francorchamps race meeting on 20-21 June.
He took GT4 Silver-class pole position and victory, firmly believing that he could have achieved an outright GT4 win on his one-off British GT comeback.
The 19-year-old travelled overnight from the United Kingdom to Belgium to replace defending GT4 Silver Champion Luca Hopkinson in the #59 Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura GT4.
This year’s British GT trip outside the UK was unlike any other in recent times because of the packed 54-car grid, roughly double the size of a normal British GT grid, and the addition of FFSA GT, which showcased France’s premier GT championship, also run by the SRO.
Porter previously contested the 2024 season in an Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo run by Forsetti Motorsport, but since then, has driven for Optimum Motorsport in the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo in GT World Challenge Europe competition.
Before his 2nd start at SRO’s 24 Hours of Spa, he arrived a week early for British GT first.
“I only turned up on Saturday,” Porter tells DSC.
“I’ve done a bit of development stuff with McLaren in the Artura, mostly in the McLaren Trophy, so obviously a lot more power, a bit different aero, but I’ve also done a bit in the GT4 spec as well, so I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with it.
“I’d never driven it around a proper track like Spa, but from the get-go, the car was absolutely mega.”
From one week driving the Artura GT4 to the next in the 720S GT3 Evo, Porter compared two of GT racing’s most distinct formulas.
“If you think about it, the GT4s are 10% race car, 90% road car, and the GT3s are 90% race car, 10% road car,” he says.
“But they’re both mega to drive, and it’s not like I prefer one over the other.”
Porter joined his #59 McLaren teammate Josh Stanton to finish third and fifth in the first and second free practice sessions, before they claimed pole position in qualifying later that day.
Stanton topped the GT4 category in his qualifying session with a 2:29.586 lap time, before Porter continued the quick one-lap pace to a 2:29.081.
It was a McLaren GT4 front-row lockout with Stanton/Porter’s combined time of 4:58.667 beating the #84 Paddock Motorsport McLaren of Blake Angliss and Revie Lake by 1.480 seconds.
“I’ve got a lot of experience in GT4,” he adds, having won three championship titles across the GT4 Winter Series, British GT and GT Cup (UK).
“When you’ve done a lot of racing, it becomes almost second-nature to switch from car to car.
“I was pretty much on the money from the first practice session on Saturday morning, and Josh did Q1, and he put it on pole by a bit of a margin.
“That just gave me confidence to go into my session, treated it as any other qualifying session, and just pushed the car to the limits and tried to extract the lap time out of it.”
British GT and the FFSA GT championships shared their sessions on-track, allowing drivers to familiarise themselves with each other’s presence.
Whilst this year’s SRO Speedweek British GT event was a 2-hour race instead of three, a ramped-up grid count meant five categories were racing together, comprising British GT’s GT3 and GT4 classes in addition to the FFSA’s GT4, Alpine A110 Cup and Ginetta Supercup categories.
The Alpines were the slowest, visibly lacking a rear wing for rear-end downforce, and the GT3s were the quickest. The variety provided a relentless multi-class spectacle.
“It was something that I’d never really experienced before,” Porter continues.
“This one was almost like a mini Nürburgring/NLS race, because you’ve got the Alpines and the Ginettas, which were like the slowest classes, and the French GT4 with a bit of a better BOP (Balance of Performance).
“Their GT4s were a bit faster, so we’re having to manage overtaking and being overtaken.
“It was a lot to think about, and I think maybe if we didn’t have the French GT4s and the other classes on track, we could have gone for the overall (GT4) win.
“And I’d say the McLaren struggles a little bit more compared to other cars in traffic, because I haven’t got the straight-line speed to drive past cars, but then it’s mega in the second sector.”
Stanton took the lead just after the first hour mark from the #74 Innovation Racing Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo, which had substantial pit stop compensation time to serve.
Porter took over the #59 Optimum McLaren and ran ahead of Innovation Racing’s Hadley Simpson, who himself was in a tense fight in fourth position having been passed by respected Aston Martin factory driver Darren Turner, in his #27 Grange Racing by FSR Aston Martin which eventually won, and the #42 Toro Verde GT Ginetta of Jack Mitchell.
“I was quite confident when I got in the car,” Porter recalls.
“There was a safety car just after I got in, so we didn’t have pit compensation, and pretty much all of our other competitors did, so I was confident that we’d have another big gap behind me.
“And then looked in our mirrors, and because of the safety car (bunching up the field), the success penalties were pretty much non-existent for everyone else, so they were all back right behind me.
“The first few laps when there wasn’t much traffic, I pulled a good five seconds.
“I had another safety car (the third and final one), pulled another five seconds, and then the backmarker traffic bunched everyone up.
“Then it was a good battle between me, Darren Turner and Jack Mitchell until the end. It was just great racing!”
With a 24-minute green flag stretch to the end, a fierce battle for the GT4 lead unfolded among three British manufacturers: Aston Martin, McLaren and Ginetta.
The trio stuck together before dealing with FFSA GT backmarkers, which mainly had Amateur-graded drivers at the wheel, as Turner and Mitchell passed Porter but not before the #59 McLaren driver returned the favour to the #42 Ginetta.
“You get held up in the corner, and it’s quite hard to get around someone when they’re on the racing line, but if you’ve got the straight-line speed, you can get a run and just keep with them.
“For us, it was hard to get that run, and that’s eventually where Turner and Mitchell ended up getting past me, coming out of No Name Corner.
“I got held up a bit on the apex, and then they managed to get a run on me, and I ended up getting Mitchell back almost straight away.
“It was just a case of Darren Turner driving past a backmarker in one corner, and then the corner after I got past them, like we always only had a car between us. There’s the same between Mitchell and me as well.
“It was just a shame that we had it there because I think it would have called for a different result if we didn’t have the traffic to get past, but I guess the GT3s think the exact same.”
Optimum Motorsport bounced back from a challenging Oulton Park race meeting after Stanton had an accident in Race 1, which caused too much damage to the car to participate in Race 2.
Stanton and Porter achieved GT4 Silver victory at Spa, but in second place, an outright GT4 win ended up 1.777 seconds away after 36 laps.
Porter is a Silver-graded driver, but he soaked up the pressures required of a factory-level racer, with Optimum Motorsport able to shrug off the pressures of a last-minute driver change.
