The penultimate event of the British GT Championship season takes place at Snetterton this weekend with two crucial races in a title fight that is closer than ever.
The highly-competitive series, which this year is exclusively equipped with Pirelli tyres for the first time, closed up considerably in the GT3 standings across the season’s most coveted races at Silverstone at Spa-Francorchamps, after a tough pair of results for early-season pace-setters Jonny Adam and Derek Johnston in their TF Sport Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT3.
They remain the points leaders but the top seven positions in the standings are covered by just 35 points, and the top three by only 10.5 points. There will be 25 points available to the winners in each of the two one-hour sprint races at the Norfolk circuit on Sunday.
Among the drivers in contention is Liam Griffin, who shares a Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 with Alexander Sims, who last weekend triumphed in the Spa 24 Hours for BMW.
British GT features two classes, GT3 and GT4. Pirelli supplies the P Zero DHC slick tyre for GT3 and the DH tyre for GT4. Both products have been proven extensively around the world: the P Zero DHC and the Cinturato WH rain tyre were also used by the 65 cars that took part in the Spa 24 Hours. These tyres have to perform equally well on a wide range of different cars, which can be front or rear-engined and have differing drivetrain layouts.
On the one previous occasion when the double sprint race format was used earlier this season (at Oulton Park) many teams chose not to change their tyres at the mid-race pit-stop, such was the sustained performance that they were getting from them. This strategic option could be popular again at Snetterton, where degradation and wear are relatively low despite the various range of corners.
Jonathan Wells, Pirelli British GT race engineer, said: “Snetterton is a very different challenge in comparison to the previous circuit Spa-Francorchamps. Throughout the lap there is a good mixture of corners, meaning the tyres have to work under a range of conditions. For example, at the start of the lap, the tyres experience high speed on the pit straight, large lateral forces through the fast Turn 1 and then significant longitudinal forces under braking for the Turn 2 hairpin. In the races, a smooth surface usually means that the wear rates and degradation rates are low, so we can expect the closely matched crews and cars to battle hard for the entire race.”
