Having confidently secured pole in the #27 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage, Andrew Jarman held his advantage to head the field cleanly into the first right-hander at Riches and pull a 1.5-second lead over Liam Griffin’s #6 Oman Racing Aston Martin, which had the better start from third on the grid than team-mate Ahmad Al Harthy on the front row.
Lee Mowle was the only slight casualty, going wide at the Montreal hairpin to drop the #888 BMW Z4 down two places to eighth. Following an uncharacteristically low-key qualifying performance, Marco Attard wasn’t best-placed to consolidate his Ecurie Ecosse BMW’s championship-leading position from fifth row on the grid, but held station as the GT3 field got through a fairly clean opening lap.
Gary Eastwood’s FF Corse Ferrari was the first to hit a problem. He ended up sideways across the track having been pitched into a spin by Salih Yoluc’s Von Ryan Racing McLaren (returning here after a spell in the sin bin following driving indiscretions earlier in the season).
The incident would lead to the car’s exclusion from an eventual 10th place and dropped the Ferrari right down the order, though not quite as far back as Jon Minshaw, who’d pitted the #63 Demon Tweeks BMW with a puncture due to an off at Riches after contact with Eastwood (which led to the latter losing five grid positions for race two). The distinctive green-and-red liveried Z4 continued its fairly torrid weekend, but was now running last.
Liam Griffin’s second-place Oman Racing Aston Martin had posted the fastest lap of 1:51.967 as times started to come down, but was now coming under pressure from team-mate Al Harthy. The challenge was drawing both Oman Racing cars to within a second of Jarman’s lead as the top three approached traffic for the first time.
Griffin was right on the rear bumper of the leading #27 Vantage within another lap and challenging the leader around the outside at Coram, making the move stick up the inside at Murrays. Having dropped a wheel onto the grass at Bombhole, Jarman appeared rather wrong-footed by traffic and was immediately into the clutches of Al Harthy, who demoted the TF Sport pole-sitter to third.
Alex Mackinnon’s RAM Racing Mercedes made contact with the 22GT Aston of Mark Farmer while scrapping for 10th – both cars emerging without damage but losing ground and coming under stewards’ investigation.
Andrew Howard was first to pit from fourth position as the pit window opened and the field streamed in. Al Harthy and Rick Parfitt – who’d been scrapping over 10th with Farmer’s 22 GT car before its incident, held out for another lap. Having had clear air, the #2 Aston would benefit from the later stop and rejoined with a 1.4 second lead.
The #10 and #6 cars then commenced a drag race down the pitlane, the Von Ryan McLaren coming out ahead for second place with Andrew Watson in a hard scrap with the challenging Rory Butcher, the pair of orange-and-black liveries side-by-side on the run to the hairpin.
The post-pitstop GT3 order was: #2 Aston Martin, #10 McLaren, #6 Aston Martin, #27 Aston Martin, #17 Aston, #007 Aston, #888 BMW, #11 Aston, #32 Ginetta, #1 BMW, #44 Ginetta, #30 Mercedes, #12 McLaren, #22 Aston, 18 Ferrari, #63 BMW.
Butcher and Watson were back on the boil, the #6 Oman Racing Aston getting the run on the McLaren into Riches, the pair almost trading paint on the entry to the Montreal hairpin as the #10 Von Ryan Racing car tried to fight back around the outside in vain.
The advantage Butcher was soon starting to establish would become its lead though, as contact occurred between Alex MacDowall’s leading #2 Aston Martin and one of the Academy Motorsport GT4s, the leader pitched onto the grass and steadily dropping back with steering damage the Oman Racing debutant would wrestle to the end of the race.
The drama further back for the last podium position was typically British GT, as the Aston Martins of Jody Fannin, Matt Bell and Jonny Adam ran within touching distance of each other. This hardwired scrap soon became the battle for second as the #10 McLaren was ordered to the pits for a three-seconds stop-go penalty to address the advantage it had gained by a short pit stop. The three-car train was now 10 seconds behind leader Butcher in a show of Aston Martin dominance.
Then, trouble for Ginetta: Ryan Ratcliffe, back to re-establish his 2013 GT4 title-winning partnership with Rick Parfitt, steered the #44 car onto the grass and into retirement after 13 laps. His team-mate Mike Simpson in the #32 car had been running steadily until he was pounced upon by a hard-charging Alex Sims in the championship-leading Barwell Ecurie Ecosse BMW Z4.
Sims had taken over the #1 car from Attard, who’d circulated cleanly at the bottom end of the top 10 after his fifth-row start, but was now forcing his way up the field in an attempt to rescue as many points as possible. Simpson was less easy to pass, the Ginetta’s pace proving difficult for the BMW, and Sims got himself between the Ginetta and a backmarker, making contact on the exit at Oggies and punting the #32 sideways. Whether this had any relevance to Simpson’s smoky retirement a lap later was unclear, but the Ginetta would not make the finish.
Butcher and Griffin therefore took the flag by over 11 seconds for the #6 Oman Racing Aston Martin’s second win of the season. Championship leaders Attard and Sims scraped some points from sixth place, so are potentially still able to wrap up the championship later Sunday afternoon.
Griffin: “A dominant result for Aston Martin to get a 1-2-3-4. The drive was good for us after I managed to get a decent start. Andrew held on well and defended fairly once I got close, but I took an early decision to go around the outside at Coram, which is not easy once you’re committed, and it paid off. I was a bit confused by how the McLaren had managed to get in front of us, but obviously the stewards saw what went on and they’d had their issues. We’ve gained some points, maybe not enough to give us a big challenge for the championship, but hopefully we can make life difficult for them towards the end, they didn’t finish the last race last year, so you never know.”
Jarman: “I was really happy with my start and had it under control until I encountered a GT4 Ginetta getting sideways through Coram, which put me off balance. It was a good, fair pass by Liam but I’d lost a bit of momentum and just tried to hold position.”
Fannin: “I had a tough time dealing with some of the traffic, particularly as I’d smashed my left mirror, but I drove my lines and managed to fend off the challenge from behind. A great result for the team, which is starting to gel really well now. We had some bad luck at Brands, but this validates the work the team has done.”
Bell: “We had got the car to a good place before Spa, though we’d not had the results earlier in the season to justify its pace and the work and experience within the team. To get P3 with a five-second penalty was always a tall order, but the car is strong and I was able to hang on. Actually, I had no power steering at all and my right arm was hanging off! I tried hard to get past Jody, but he drove well and I had my mirrors full of Jonny he kept me occupied. It was a great battle and a great result for the whole TF Sport team.”
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