Adam Carroll lead home an impressive maiden 2016 British GT victory for he and Barwell Motorsport team-mate Liam Griffin in the first of two races at Oulton Park today, ahead of Joe Osborne and Seb Morris. And, in doing so gave the Surrey-based squad its first ever victory with the Lamborghini Huracan GT3.
The Northern Irishman finished 11s clear of Osborne’s AMDtuning.com BMW Z4 GT3, which became embroiled in a scintillating nine-lap battle with Morris’ Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3. With credit due to Carroll’s team-mate Griffin, who drove a perfect opening 30-minute stint to setup the victory.
For the first time in a long while, the entire field of GT3 and GT4 entrants completed the first lap of the 2.6-mile leafy Cheshire track without incident. However, it was a short relief as a sizeable crash for the GT4 car of Sean Byrne on lap three brought out the safety car for five laps.
Prior to the caution, the main benefiter from the opening tours was Rick Parfitt Jnr in the Team Parker Bentley, who made a deft move up the inside of Griffin at Old Hall on the first lap, with Griffin’s Barwell team-mate Minshaw out in front.
The driver to lose out most in the opening laps was reigning champion, Andrew Howard. The Beechdean-AMR owner/driver dropped from sixth to ninth on the second lap, in a move that began with an overtake by Optimum Motorsports’ Will Moore.
Once tyres had been collected from the Century incident, and worryingly some had landed in the spectator zone following impact, this left around six racing laps before the pit window opened.
Little changed in that time, but Parfitt Jnr did a solid job to not allow Minshaw to escape, likely mindful that the Lamborghini racer had a 7s addition to his mandatory pit stop time due to finishing second at Rockingham. The motivation for Parfitt Jnr to make a potentially risky move on the narrow sweeps of the Oulton track was therefore low.
Championship leader Derek Johnston was sat in fourth behind Griffin, and he also had an addition to his pit time, a cumbersome 10s. The TF Sport racer was being kept busy by fifth placed Alastair McCaig’s Black Bull Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 650s GT3, who now had a healthy gap to Moore’s Audi in sixth.
That gap became even wider when Moore had an off on lap thirteen right before the pit window opened. The former Ginetta racer stayed out while the majority of the field pitted along with Griffin, who became the race leader.
As the gaggle of GT3s made their stops within the narrow confines of the Oulton pit lane, where cars have to stop and be rolled back to the garage in a diagonal way, three of the race leaders tripped over each other. This was significant because the penalties that followed dictated the race outcome.
Problems occurred when Rob Bell, in for McCaig in the Ecurie Ecosse McLaren was rolled into the fast lane of the pits by his mechanics, right as Morris was coming down to exit. The Bentley driver had to stop and wait for Bell to leave, but in doing so, Phil Keen in the race-leading Lamborghini (in for Minshaw) was released too. This caused a bottle neck and the upshot was Morris lost time, while the McLaren and Lamborghini were given Stop/Go penalties five laps later, taking them out of contention.
What this robbed from the race, it also provided. For now, Carroll led the race by 5s from the AMDtuning.com Z4 of Osborne, who was 1s ahead of ex British GT champ, Jon Barnes in the TF Sport Aston Martin. When Bell and Keen exited for their penalties from fourth and sixth, this promoted Morris to fourth (from fifth) and multiple British GT race winner Jonny Adam up to fifth.
Adam, fresh from a brief tour of duty at the Nurburgring 24 Hours yesterday was clearly keen for track time, delivering three overall fastest laps in quick succession, which aided his progress from ninth to fifth; his best was an absolutely blistering 1:34.895 on lap 20, good enough for ninth in PRO qualifying yesterday, pole in the AM session.
A brief moment of silence hit the track as it initially looked like Morris too had been given a Stop/Go penalty, but it was merely an error (!!) by race administration and instead the Tolman Ginetta of Mike Simpson was given the penalty, adding to another trying showing for the G55 GT3, as was Ryan Ratcliffe in the Optimum Audi.
With the field well and truly shuffled, there was only one battle to watch in GT3. As Carroll roared off, Osborne fought the Z4, incredibly now a 7-year-old veteran of the category, but eeked out a margin from Barnes, who quickly became prey for Morris.
With the TF Sport Aston disposed of on lap 26, Morris set about a frankly incredible charge, reducing Osborne’s 6.5s cushion to 0.022s in just seven laps. The final pair of laps saw an awesome battle for the spectators in attendance, as both cars scrabbled on ageing tyres using the whole width of the track, and then, a little bit more.
It was good, fair racing and Osborne, so often the mercurial talent of British GT, again prevailed, using all of his guile to fend off the Bentley driver’s attentions.
Barnes and team-mate Mark Farmer took a distant fourth, just 0.3s ahead of the sister TF Sport car of championship leaders, Adam and Johnston. How much will the three points between fourth and fifth matter come the end of the season?
Keeping it clean and driving astutely. That’s what Martin Short does best, and the ex-Le Mans racer and team-mate Richard Neary did a superb job to come home sixth amid the chaos of the first sprint race of the year.
The final lap saw few changes of position, but Rob Bell was one driver that battled against all odds to ensure he got the best position possible, taking eighth at the flag from Ross Wylie after dropping to a lowly eleventh with the penalty, just behind Keen’s pole-sitting Lamborghini.
Luke Davenport took ninth to lead home Simpson and ensure the Tolman Motorsport cars enjoyed their first double-points finish of 2016.
Beechdean-AMR’s challenging weekend continued after Howard’s lap two slip, with the team being given a Stop/Go penalty on lap 25 along with Ratcliffe and Simpson, finishing a lowly fourteenth, last in GT3.
The second and final 60-minute sprint race of the weekend gets underway at 15:30 BST and with no live television coverage of the round, the best place to find out what happened is via dailysportscar.com.
Adam Carroll (1st, Barwell Motorsports Lamborghini): “The race was really good. I’m very happy to win. Liam did a great job and maintained the gap to the leading pair. We decided to pit a bit later to avoid the chaos in the busy pit lane and that seemed to pay off. The pace of our car today was great and to have a 14s lead was a good feeling.”
Joe Osborne (2nd, AMDtuning.com BMW): “Our pace was not really on the money, and there was no way they would have been able to chase Carroll’s Lamborghini. That said, I’m happy that we were able to use what we had to best advantage.”
Rick Parfitt Jnr (3rd, Team Parker Racing Bentley): “Seb drove a blinder. We knew the Demon Tweeks car would have a penalty, but unfortunately the McLaren pushed out in front of us, and effectively lost us the race. Third isn’t bad considering we had around 20s sat stationary in the pits.”
