British GT - Donington Park (1) - 2024
With the British GT Championship visiting Donington Park twice a year, plus media days, it’s the circuit we have visited the most over the past few years. For this reason, we tasked ourselves with trying to find a few angles that we hadn’t seen before. We did find a few, the results are below.
While Saturday might have been dry for practice and qualifying, Sunday was an entirely different story. The day started off nice but the clouds were rolling in around midday and as the grid started to form, it was looking rather ominous… The cars set off on their warm-up laps behind the safety car, half way around and the heavens opened causing the race start to be abandoned and the cars all took their places back on the grid. Team members ran back to the grid and the frantic fitting of wet tyres began and it wasn’t long before the race resumed. With a couple of laps behind the safety car, RAM Racing deciding to pit on lap one and get Marciello behind the wheel. As a dry line started to appear, the field started to pit for slicks around twenty minutes in to the race. The rain was far from done however, and as it began to come down again, teams started to make their second stops but some decided to try and last it out. As a biblical downpour happened over turn one, those still on slicks had a date with the gravel. Some managed to ride it out and continue, others were not so lucky, some beached and some in the wall. A safety car was quickly mobilised but this didn’t stop some from still leaving the track, even with circuit vehicles and marshals attending to those already stuck. Far from an ideal scenario… The rain continued to come down and before long, the race was red flagged, with seven or eight cars all stuck in the gravel at turn one..
The race resumed 45 minutes later with Collard in the lead in the Barwell Lamborghini but the action still came thick and fast. Positions continued to shuffle through two more periods of Full Course Yellow and two more safety cars. With the final run to the line, it was Phill Keen leading, with Sandy Mitchell and Tom Gamble in hot pursuit. Keen did a great job defending from a charging Mitchell but it was all in vain, a small mistake negotiating traffic was all that Sandy needed to get through. It wasn’t long before Gamble also got through, leaving Keen in third and a race still on for first. With one lap to go Gamble was hot on the heels of Mitchell but going slightly wide into to turn one for the last time lost him a few car lengths and any hope of a last lap pass.
Results -
GT3 -
1 - Barwell Motorsport - Mitchell/Martin - Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2
2 - Optimum Motorsport - Radcliffe/Gamble - McLaren 720s GT3 Evo
3 - 2 Seas Motorsport - Loggie/Keen - AMG Gt3 Evo
GT4 -
1 - Optimum Motorsport - Meakin/Brown - McLaren Artura GT4
2 - Forsetti Motorsport - Warren/Orton - Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo
3 - Toyota Gazoo - Jundu/Vaughan - Toyota GR Supra GT4 Evo
At Lazenby Visuals, we now have a few weeks on before a very busy period. Next up is BritGT at Spa, followed back to back by Spa 24hr, Misano 12hr and back to England for BritGT at Snetterton.
