Monday’s 10-minute warm-up got underway somewhat late after an incident in Ginetta qualifying required some tyre rebuilding at the entry to Old Hall.
Most of the teams had engines running half an hour before warm-up started. With temperatures marginally above freezing and lots of standing water (the forecast snow is just about holding off at the moment, but torrential rain overnight is only just subsiding) the weather will be a big factor in both of today’s races.
It was wise to approach the session with some trepidation, not least with race one due to start less than two hours later, and it was mainly the Am drivers that took to the track first. Andrew Howard in the Beechdean Aston Martin looked the most comfortable and was the only one really driving ‘at pace’ in GT3, but this was still over two minutes a lap.
The Toyotas featured strongly in GT4 and were towards the front of the class times throughout, actually posting the second-best lap in class late on with a 2:12.347 for Quinn, only bettered by the #42 BMW of Ben Green with a 2:11.695, then it was #10, #55 and #88.
Equipe Verschuur and Team HHC are certainly showing some consistent form so far this weekend. The #77 in the hands of Murfitt was shown as fastest on the timing screen after the session, but reports were that this was a time set when it cut through the link track at Cascades after a problem.
The #54 Nissan, which missed the second GT4 qualifying session yesterday after breaking a gearbox mount in the first, only managed an installation lap before coming back into the garage. The vibration that broke the gearbox mount was unfortunately still there. RJN team principal Bob Neville said: “the only thing we didn’t change was the differential, so we’ll do that now.”
In GT3, a few of the Pro drivers went out at the end of the session and it was Danes in the first two carriages, Sorensen taking #17 round in a 1:58.396 and Thiim less than two tenths behind. A similar gap back saw Phil Keen’s #33 Lamborghini third-quickest, before the best-placed Am drivers Howard (2:00.816) and Am pole-sitter Flick Haigh (2:02.594).
Matthew George (#44 Jaguar) reported back after the session that there were “cars off everywhere, I saw at least five or six drivers standing around at the side and I’m sure one of them was the #1 Bentley”. Indeed, after the session we spotted Parfitt in the garage, deep in conversation with his team with lots of opposite lock miming going on, and notably the #1 Continental was missing.
