2 Seas Motorsport completed a sweep of the opening British GT Championship round of the season at Oulton Park, after Jules Gounon and Ian Loggie steered the D2-liveried #1 Mercedes AMG GT3 to victory in Race 2 this afternoon.
This added to the team’s Race 1 win with the sister car of Jonny Adam and James Cottingham earlier in the day, which got the team’s campaign off to a perfect start.
It was a strong performance from both drivers in the #1 on a drying track, who benefitted from a stop-go penalty handed to the #15 Ram Racing Mercedes in the second half of the race for a pit stop infringement, while John Ferguson was holding the lead. The penalty dropped Ferguson to second, and made the task for Loggie simple: hold the lead and bring it home, which he did, crossing the line over 30 seconds clear of the chasing pack.
This victory was made possible by a mercurial performance from pole-winner Gounon, who said he found it ‘tricky’ all day due to the mixed conditions which made the circuit ‘amazing’ to drive on.
The Frenchman paced the field from the front row of the grid at the start. Only Rafaelle Marciello was able to keep tabs with him in the Ram AMG GT3, before an off on the run to the hairpin across the grass cost him valuable seconds and put an end to his chances of taking the lead with a pass on track in the first half of the race. Remarkably, Marciello saved the car from a full 360 spin and contact with the barriers, allowing him to continue on without losing any positions and pit from second.
“I saw him in the mirrors and I thought ‘oh that’s a big shunt here’,” said Gounon after the race when asked about the pressure from behind.
The two Mercedes out front proved so much faster than the rest of the GT3 pack on the wet circuit that when Ferguson came in from the lead to serve the stop-go, handed to the team for completing its pit stop too quickly, he only dropped to second, ahead of the #88 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 EVO of Alex West. The McLaren would eventually finish third, the Swede unable to make a move on the Mercedes through traffic in the closing laps.
The Race 1-winning #4 2 Seas Mercedes ended up finishing fourth, just behind the retro-liveried McLaren, securing a strong result from sixth on the grid and with the pit stop success penalty for winning earlier in the day.
The Beechdean Aston Martin Vantage which came close to winning the first race of the weekend ended up completing the top five, after another strong performance from Ross Gunn and later Andrew Howard. It was a disappointing run from the Century Motorsport #91 BMW M4 GT4 which started on the front row and faded. Dan Harper and Darren Leung would finish sixth.
In GT4 it was an all-McLaren podium after the Academy Motorsport Ford Mustangs took a dominant 1-2 in the class earlier in the day. Winning the race was the #29 Race Lab Artura of Ian Gough and Thomas Wrigley, which sat second early and took the lead during the pit cycle halfway through the race from the #90 Optimum Motorsport Artura.
“I think Tom Handed over the car in such a good position for me, I was worried I would choke so I asked for the gap each lap to the car behind and pushed to hold on,” British GT debutant Ian Gough said after the race.
Optimum’s #90 was chased home by the #30 DTO example, which finished just three-tenths behind in the final podium position after a late race duel between Jack Brown and Aston Millar.
R Racing’s Vantage AMR GT4 was the first of the other car types in the class across the line, finishing fourth, ahead of the Drivetac Mercedes-AMG GT4 that completed the top five.
Team Parker Racing’s Porsche finished sixth in the hands of Dan Vaughan and Zac Meakin, with Matt Cowley and Erik Evans’ Academy Ford Mustang coming home seventh after serving an additional seven-second compensation time handicap for finishing second in Race 1.
Image courtesy of British GT/JEP
