A great weekend for CRH Racing at Silverstone, May 28th and 29th, saw the team take their maiden GT Cup class win in a tightly fought final race of the meeting - Jonathan Evans and Tom Bradshaw in contention the whole way and making their decisive move to take the lead with eight laps to go. Having already recorded a second and a third in Saturday's two races in their Porsche 997 GT3 Cup it was a fine demonstration of what the team can achieve in their first season of GT Cup action.
Jonathan was in the Porsche for Saturday's two 25-minute races and continued his fine run of success in those events with a second place finish in race one, before following that up with third in race two and more trophies for the CRH Racing cabinet. Knowing they had a car that worked well round Silverstone and were on the class pace, the team were determined to to do even better in Sunday's 50-minute two-driver event, despite being yet to finish one of those races let alone bring home a trophy!
Jonathan was in the car at the start of Sunday's race and after initially running second in GTB moved into the class lead, and sixth overall, on lap 17. He held that position until he pitted on lap 23 to hand over to Tom, who emerged 14th overall and fifth in class after the compulsory stop.
As cars ahead made their stop the CRH Racing Porsche worked its way back up the field, and once the order had settled Tom was running second in class - and set about chasing down the similar Porsche of the leader. Right with it going into lap 39, he quickly went past and was able to open a gap in the remaining eight laps - giving the team their first GT Cup GTB class victory and fastest race lap to complete their domination.
"We did really well on Saturday despite having a problem with the gearbox on downshifts," explained Jonathan. "We are getting more used to running the car and could have done even better without that issue - but still got two good results.
"On Sunday it was great to run at the front of the class, it was a hard chase to close in on the leader and get right up there, and then Tom was able to bring the car home first. It was a good feeling - we set up a new team, brought in the people we needed, and now we have won!"
"We came out after the pit-stop behind the class leader but we had good pace," said Tom. "We were able to close in on him and get past into Copse at the start of a lap, I got a run out of the last corner and was able to take the lead. I had seen the gap coming down in the pit-board, knew we had a good few laps left, so I was confident we were going to it. It was a great feeling - and a relief - to cross the line ahead and know we had made the progress we wanted to."
Next Races: Rockingham, Northants. June 18th and 19th.
