IN PIRELLI-EQUIPPED BRITISH GT
The Lamborghini Huracan and Bentley Continental were taken to their first British GT Championship victories in the two races at Oulton Park on Bank Holiday Monday.
The first of the one-hour sprint races was headed almost exclusively by the pair of Barwell Motorsport-run Lamborghinis. Jon Minshaw led the first stint in the #33 Huracan but lost out – together with a number of other frontrunners – in a chaotic couple of minutes in the Cheshire circuit’s tightly-packed pit lane as the mandatory driver changes played out in the middle of the race.
Liam Griffin stayed out for another lap in the #6 Lamborghini and had the pit lane largely to himself, allowing his driving partner Adam Carroll to pick up a five-second race lead which he more than doubled over the remaining distance.
Carroll made the call to have the tyres changed as he took over the car, but most other GT3 teams displayed supreme confidence in the Pirelli P Zero DHC product by only using one set in each race, despite the demands of the fast and flowing circuit and relatively high temperatures.
The BMW Z4 of Lee Mowle and Joe Osborne finished second ahead of the Bentley Continental GT3 of Rick Parfitt Jr and Seb Morris. Championship leaders Derek Johnston and Jonny Adam finished fifth on the tail of the sister TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage of Mark Farmer and Jon Barnes.
In race two, there was a commanding performance from the Bentley drivers. From pole position, Morris streaked away and built a 10-second margin over the first half of the race, which Parfitt then maintained before a crash for GT4 leader Anna Walewska caused the race to be stopped five minutes early.
For the third time in as many events with Pirelli as exclusive tyre supplier, the lap record for GT3 machinery was broken, on this occasion by Morris. It was a first win for the 20-year-old following his switch from GP3 and came on the home track for both himself and Bentley, which is based in nearby Crewe. He said: “The car was brilliant. The tyres hung in there brilliantly. We started on new Pirellis and the consistency of the car was fantastic. We were just able to push a hundred per cent and we didn’t even feel the need to change tyres.” Morris dedicated the win to fellow Bentley driver Andrew Palmer, injured in a crash in the United States on Saturday.
Rob Bell and Alasdair McCaig finished second in their McLaren 650S ahead of the Keen-Minshaw Lamborghini, ensuring three different manufacturers filled the GT3 podium in both races. Adam and Johnston kept the variety going in their Aston Martin in fourth to retain the GT3 points lead.
After the late incident in race two, the Ginetta pairing of Graham Johnson and Mike Robinson secured a double GT4 victory to regain the class lead, defeating the Aston Martin of Matthew Graham and Jack Mitchell in race one and the Maserati of Marcus Hoggarth and Abbie Eaton in race two.
Pirelli’s British GT race engineer Jonathan Wells commented: “It’s been a nice experience coming to Oulton Park for the first time competitively. The performance throughout the weekend was really strong despite having quite hot conditions – certainly a lot hotter than in the previous two rounds at Brands Hatch and Rockingham. The majority of the teams opted for a no-stop strategy in both races.”
The fourth event of the British GT season will be a unique three-hour endurance race at Silverstone on 11-12 June.
