The Avon Tyres British GT Championship returned to Spa Francorchamps this weekend for the annual away day for Britain’s premier GT championship.
The circuit deep in the Ardenne always proves to be a challenge and this year was no exception.
Race 1 saw the cars on track at 9:15am and with the morning mist still clearing the race was declared wet. With two warm up laps behind the safety car many of the drivers elected to pit for slicks however the two Oman Racing team Astons gambled on slicks before the start so found themselves promoted to the front of the grid whilst the rest of the front runners queued up in the pit lane.
Al Harthy in the leading Oman Aston had built a gap of 10 seconds within a few laps but closing fast was Jon Minshaw in the Trackspeed Porsche.
In GT4 Andrew Jarman held the lead in the TF Sport Aston Martin ahead of the Ginetta of pole man Basey-Fisher and Ross Wiley in the Beechdean Aston.
After the pit stops the pro-drivers took over with just 4 seconds separating Micheal Caine in the Aston and Phil Keen in the Porsche. Keen continued to close the gap and with 10 minutes of the race left made his move to take the lead of the race and eventual victory.
Behind the leading pair came Rory Butcher in the second Oman Aston and Alexander Simms in the Ecurie Ecosse BMW Z4 another 30 seconds back. GT4 saw Devon Modell take the victory from Gavan Kershaw who stole second place from Jake Giddings on the very last lap.
Race 2 saw Alexander Sims and Marco Attard take the victory ahead of Wolfgand Reip and Chris Hoy. Ross Wylie took the GT 4 victory with Osman Yusuf coming in second in front of the Ginetta of Rick Parfitt jnr in a race slowed with two safety car periods. A big crash at Eau Rouge for Tom Sharp brought the first safety car out and just as the pit window opened Derek Johnston left the track at Les Combes triggering the second safety car. The frustration for race leader Reip was evident as his hard work to build a lead for Hoy to maintain was undone by the safety car.
At the second restart and with only minutes of the race remaining Chris Hoy gave up the lead upon instruction from the team to avoid a possible penalty for a pit lane infringement and Attard was able to bring the BMW home extending his lead in the championship to 23.5 points in front of second place pairing Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam. By Jurek Biegus.
