Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn sealed the 2015 GT4 Championship at Snetterton on Sunday with a fourth place finish in a race cut short by heavy rain.
The Beechdean AMR pairing also took the record for the youngest combined age of any pairing in British GT history of 33 years and 330 days. Chadwick can also lay claim to the first female to win a British GT championship as well as the youngest ever champion at 17 years and 95 days.
It wasn’t all plain sailing after a P5 finish in race one saw their points advantage cut to 28.5 points. A pit-stop success penalty, difficult driver changes and a throttle issue all combined for a difficult first race.
After the glorious sunshine of race one, race two began in heavy drizzle which progressively got worse throughout the race until with 11 minutes remaining the red flags went out and brought proceedings to a halt. With championship rivals ISSY Racing struggling in the wet conditions Chadwick and Gunn kept their heads and were able to snatch the championship with one race weekend to spare.
Also in GT4 Anna Walewska and Rob Garofall’s University of Bolton Ginetta G55 finished seventh in race one before achieving their best result of the year in race two. After challenging for the podium in the early part of the race they eventually settled for sixth place.
The battle will continue in GT3 as Liam Griffin and Rory Butcher took their second win of the season in race one. The Oman Racing Aston Martin finished at the front of an Aston Martin one-two-three-four including both TF Sport entries of Andrew Jarman and Jody Fannin, and Derek Johnston and Matt Bell. The Beechdean AMR championship contenders Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam took fourth place ahead of the Triple Eight Racing BMW Z4 GT3.
The Beechdean team then went on to claim victory in the second rain soaked race bringing them to within two points of the championship leaders Marco Attard and Alexander Simms who could only manage eighth and tenth in race one and two respectively.
Second place went to the Demon Tweaks pairing of Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen whilst the 22GT Racing Aston Martin of Mark Farmer and Jon Barnes came home with a season best third place.
The championship decider will be at Donington Park on the 12th and 13th of September. By Jurek Biegus
