Team Abba Racing’s Richard and Sam Neary will start Sunday’s Silverstone 500 from pole position after heavy rain washed out qualifying for the Intelligent Money British GT Championship’s blue riband event.
Grid order is now based on Free Practice 2’s results, and specifically the combination of each crew member’s fastest lap. That equation also sees Zac Meakin and Daniel Vaughan – who between them set GT4’s four fastest FP2 times – start up front in class thanks to their cumulative 4m45.661s. That was enough for Team Parker Racing’s Porsche to beat Optimum’s Jack Brown and Charles Clark by three seconds, while R Racing’s Aston Martin of Seb Hopkins and Josh Miller completed the top-three.
Back at the front, Abba’s 4m28.880s was 0.178s faster than RAM Racing’s John Ferguson and Raffaele Marciello who pipped Ian Loggie and FP2’s overall pace setter Jules Gounon to a front row slot by just 0.002s. 2 Seas’ second Mercedes-AMG shared by James Cottingham and Jonny Adam was another seven thousandths further back.
Qualifying began with rain falling but was red flagged shortly after when the #27 Optimum and #84 Greystone GT McLarens both span separately at Chapel. They were quickly recovered but no sooner had GT3 Q1 resumed than Andrew Howard aquaplaned into the wall at the same corner and triggered another stoppage.
It would prove definitive despite Race Control initially suspending qualifying for 25 minutes before the deteriorating conditions were deemed too dangerous for track action to resume.
Assuming the damage is largely cosmetic, Beechdean AMR’s Aston Martin – which also features Ross Gunn – will start fifth tomorrow ahead of Barwell’s Shaun Balfe and Sandy Mitchell, who is hunting back-to-back 500 wins.
Meanwhile, GT4’s top-six was completed by DTO’s Josh Rowledge and Aston Millar, co-championship leaders Will Moore and Matt Nicoll-Jones (Academy Motorsport), and leading Pro-Am pairing Michael Crees and Tom Holland (Raceway Motorsport).
The three-hour Silverstone 500 goes green at 12:20 BST on Sunday. Watch it live on Sky Sports F1 and SRO’s GT World YouTube channel.
