Liam Griffin and Adam Carroll took the first ever win in British GT for the Lamborghini Hurracan as the Barwell Motorsport duo took advantage of chaos during the pitstops.
In GT4 the Optimum Motorsport Ginetta of Graham Johnson and Mike Robinson dominated the race.
The Barwell race win was the first win for any kind of Lamborghini in British GT since Spa in 2010. They ran third from the start and when the leading sister Barwell car and the Team Parker Bentley made their stops he took the lead.
An early safety car period with only three laps gone stopped the field from getting too spread out but things stayed relatively static.
The team Parker Bentley with Rick Parfitt at the wheel had always planned to just follow the Demon Tweeks Lamborghini and then pass in the pitstops when the Lamborghini needed to stop for an extra seven seconds as a success penalty.
But with Oulton’s tight pitlane often causing chaos it was far from certain. Initially the Bentley had a good stop but as they went to power down the pitlane, the Ecurie Eccosse Mclaren was pulled out it’s pit bay straight in front of the Bentley. To make matters worse the Mclaren then stalled.
After what have must have seemed like an eternity for Seb Morris who was now in the Bentley, the Mclaren moved out the way. The Bentley had lost about fifteen seconds, the Demon Tweeks Lamborghini had also been caught in the mess and actually lightly tapped the Bentely in the unexpected queue that had built up.
The Ecurie Ecosse Mclaren received a stop go penalty for the mess. Also in for a penalty was the Demon Tweeks Lamborghini after it was judged to have broken the spirit of the rules in the way that they took their pit stop. They had put the car ready to pull out and then served the seven seconds success penalty. The stewards said the whole thing should have been served before moving the car and this meant the Lamborghini had to make a return pit visit, putting it out of contention for the win.
Taking advantage of all the chaos was the other Barwell Lamborghini which had stopped later and now held a comfortable lead with Adam Carroll now at the wheel. The AMD tuning BMW Z4 had now found itself in second after the team called their pitstop perfectly. Lee Mowle had handed over to Joe Osborne who now was in a comfortable second. It wasn’t to remain comfortable for long however as Seb Morris, fired up by the pitlane chaos, was hunting down the BMW. He closed until he was right behind the Z4 for the final few laps. But he was unable to find a way past although he pulled alongside the BMW as they crossed the line.
Griffin was pleased to see Carroll take the win for them: “I struggled a little with the tyres at the start of my stint before they came back in towards the end, so I wasn’t as close to the other Lambo as I’d have liked. But we knew that if we weren’t within a certain time that we’d do an extra lap, which worked out for us in the end. I guess we were fortunate to get the jump and come out with a nice healthy lead. Clearly anything can happen in the pit-stops so we’re not completely out of it in race two, even with the success penalty.”
Rick Parfitt was understandably unhappy with the way they had ended up third;
“Being blocked in by the McLaren really cost us the race, which had been going exactly to plan up to that point. We needed to get past [Liam] Griffin because he wouldn’t be serving a pit-stop success penalty, which we did. I felt like I had the pace on Minshaw but Jon is very good around Oulton. I knew that just sticking close would be enough to jump him in the pits. It should have been easy! Sure, the McLaren got a 10 second penalty but that didn’t help us. That’s racing I guess. Seb drove a blinder after that to at least limit the damage.”
AMD tuning’s Lee Mowle was realistic on the way they had taken the second place;
“We lucked in, to be honest. Oulton’s been a lucky circuit for us; last season we started 13th and finished second. Our BMW doesn’t have the raw pace of the newer cars so we were fortunate, both before and during the stops. Pitting first just as the window opened really helped us. Then it was a case of survival for Joe, who did a phenomenal job to keep Seb Morris at bay. He drove a stonker, especially through sector two where we don’t have the grunt.”
Morris had passed Jon Barnes TF sport Aston to be able to pursue the BMW and now Barnes came under pressure from team mate Jonny Adam’s Aston and the two battled in a similar way to the second and third placed cars. Barnes was able to hold off Adam as they crossed the line.
Martin Short and Richard Neary were another duo who had managed to take advantage of the pit stop chaos and they took their Rollcentre racing BMW Z4 to sixth. Phil Keen managed to salvage seventh for the Barwell car after all its pit visits with the similarly penalised Ecurie Ecosse Mclaren in eighth after Rob Bell had taken over the car from Alisdair McCaig.
Tolman Motorsport completed the top ten with the David Pattison/Luke Davenport car ahead of the Ian Stinton and Mike Simpson duo.
In GT4 Graham Johnson withstood early pressure from the RCIB Insurance Ginetta with William Philips at the wheel before pulling away into an unbeatable lead of twenty three seconds by the flag after Mike Robinson took over.
Johnson was happy to make up for his Rockingham crash;
“The first couple of laps were quite easy but then Will [Phillips] started way faster than I thought he would! So I had to pull my finger out and push a lot harder. The car felt great; it’s so consistent. And because of that it’s easy for me to be consistent. I was desperate to make up for what happened at Rockingham and let Mike bring it home. Optimum have done a brilliant job to repair the car since then.”
The GT4 field was shrunk by several collisions Alex Reed’s Lanan Ginetta was an early casualty in an incident which saw significant damage to the Ecurie Ecosse GT4 Mclaren. The JWB Motorsport Mclaren was also a visitor to the barriers during the race as was the Century Motorsport car of Schjerpen and Bryne.
It was the Generation AMR Macmillan Aston Martin that found it’s way through to second Mathew Graham having a good first stint before Jack Mitchell finished the job. Mitchell was very happy with his race;
“I knew we’d be in the hunt when Matty [Graham] pitted from P3, but I was a bit surprised to get back out in second! I knew the Optimum Ginetta would be really quick after that so I just worked at trying to maintain a set pace and keep the gap to third. It’ll be harder in race two with all the Pros starting and us having the pit-stop success penalty, but we’ll do our best to do the same again: stay out of trouble, pick off a few people and see where we end up.”.
GT4: NO STOPPING OPTIMUM’S JOHNSON AND ROBINSON
In stark contrast to the issues up front the GT4 class proved relatively straightforward for pole-sitters Johnson and Robinson. The former led away from the start, survived the Safety Car period and subsequent pressure from RCIB Insurance Racing’s William Phillips before stopping later than his rivals to avoid the packed pit-lane and hand his Ginetta G55 over to Robinson with a manageable advantage. The gap had grown to 23 seconds at the chequered flag.
Jordan Stilp managed to hold off Nathan Freke to take the final podium slot with his team mate William Philips;
“I made a mega start and just went down the middle of everyone in one move! We’ve struggled in qualifying so far this year but always had the race pace, so I was confident of converting the start into a good result after that. It’s great to be back on the podium after our problems at Rockingham.” Said Philips after the race.
This left Nathan Freke and Anna Walewska in fourth, narrowly missing out on a podium. The Simpson Motorsport Ginetta was next; Nick Jones handing over to Scott Malvern.
Two Astons were sixth and seventh, the Beachdean Junior car of Jack Bartholomew and Jordan Albert beating the Generation AMR car. This was the car which had been raced at the first two rounds by Jamie Chadwick as a temporary stand in but she stepped aside this weekend to allow James Holder to partner Mathew George.
Eighth was the second RCIB Insurance car of Robert Barable and Aron Mason and the Ecurie Ecosse Mclaren was classified ninth, penalised for the crash with the Lanan racing Ginetta.
Abbie Eaton and Marcus Hogarth had been going well in their Ebor racing Maserati before the brakes failed during Abbie’s stint;
“That was an interesting experience,” Said Eaton afterwards, “The first time in my fourteen year career I’ve had brake failure!” Eaton managed to get the car back to the pits but they retired from there.
Full results are available from TSL Timing; By Marc Waller
