British GT Rockingham – Sunday GT4 Race Report

Matt Nicoll-Jones and Stewart Linn buoyed their class-leading points total yet further, coming out on top after a great battle with Rob Austin on a deluged Rockingham bowl. 

Nicoll-Jones started from class pole and pulled away, with a clear strategy in mind:  “My aim was to get in front and try and keep some GT3 cars between me and the rest; but I had no radio so I was pushing so hard.”  On lap five, his strategy did not quite go to plan:  “I was quite a lot quicker than the others but I caught a puddle at Brook, it sent me around and I had no chance, you are just a passenger when it goes.”  The IMS car regained the track fifth (out of six) in class, Andrew Howard already having lost too much time for the Aston Martin to figure for the remainder of the race.

Joe Osborne in #51 then took the lead briefly, but his understeering car was also steaming up “like a sauna but without the fat Germans”.  He had understandably been harried by Hunter Abbott throughout the opening laps and Abbott was able to take the lead after a couple of attempts - first a sustained look all the way around the outside of the banking, and another attempt leading to him moving off-line and hitting a puddle deep enough to rip a substantial part of the back right of the car off.  “The conditions were very difficult; there was standing water pretty much everywhere.  It was a case of staying on and not making mistakes, driving at 9/10ths and keeping the car in a good position but safe.  Visibility was very restricted, especially with the spray from the GT3 cars.  It took five or six laps to pass Osborne but once I was past him I got stuck behind a GT3 Ferrari, I was all over him in the corners but they just have so much power on the straights.  Having a go at passing Osborne I saw a massive puddle in front of me and thought ‘Oh god’, I just clenched everything, the back came round a bit and it pulled the rear bumper off but I was still pointing in the right direction.”

By now, just two laps after his spin, Nicoll-Jones was back up to third, only to spin at Brook again and fall back to fifth.  “I caught another puddle at Brook and as I was spinning I hit the banking and ran out of lock and it went around again.”  Straight back onto a charge, one lap later he was up to fourth and the next lap third, gaining on the leaders by half a second to a second a lap.

Colin Wilmott pitted (too early for the driver change window) with a problem from third place.  Works to the car were minor but it was enough to cost #52 over a lap and any chance of featuring for the remainder of the race.

On lap 13, the De Zille Butler Lamborghini became beached in the gravel at Tarzan and a safety car was inevitable.  This was good news for the recovering Nicoll-Jones, bad news for #51 because they had already headed for the pits and their driver change, without the benefit of the safety car.  Osborne thought their early stop was a good call, he had “spotted the safety car waiting at the end of the pitlane with its lights on, so I thought I’d dive in but unfortunately the safety car didn’t stay out quite long enough.”  Third place was all that Fulvio Mussi could really aim for after that.  “We didn’t have the pace and the brake balance was stuck in the middle which wasn’t where we wanted it and I had quite a few lock-ups.  I knew we weren’t going to catch the leaders so I aimed for the last podium place.”  And he got it.

Nicoll-Jones was able to close right up on the back of the #55 Rob Austin car as they entered the pitlane for the driver change, the bunching up behind the train had cost Hunter Abbott around three and a half seconds of his lead, so both cars entered their boxes at exactly the same time.

Richard Evans pitted from third place, handing over to Phil Bailey who went back out to bring the car home fourth. 

This set the scene for the final act.  Stewart Linn took over #88 and managed to leave the pits ahead of #55, in fact after the first racing lap the gap was 3.2 seconds and #88 was running in ninth place overall.  Rob Austin was a little puzzled as to how they had been overtaken in the pitstop as his crew reckoned their stop was “exactly the minimum length and we were in the lead when we stopped.”  Still, once his glasses had cleared from steam he got his eye in quickly and set about slashing Linn’s lead.  Diving down the inside coming off the banking, Linn held the racing line but coming out of Yentwood it was neck and neck as he and Austin drove side-by-side through Chapman Curve; Austin finally making it stick into Pif Paf.  Linn was “conscious that he had been closing on me and once he was past it looked like he was going to pull away and build a lead but our car was still quite good so I kept plugging away.”

It became apparent that #55 and #88 were taking quite different lines.  Austin’s initially seemed more successful, particularly as the leaders began to lap them, but once there were no passing GT3 cars between them and Linn had a clear view of the white Ginetta ahead, the gap closed right up again and Linn was almost able to replicate exactly the same move that Abbott had laid on him just a couple of laps before.  He hadn’t quite made it ahead by Pif Paf though, so lifted out of it and bided his time through Gracelands.   Linn adopted a different line to Austin out of Tarzan, lining them up side-by-side in a G50 drag race behind the paddock, Linn’s inside line giving him the lead as they emerged from Brook with six minutes to go.  Austin admitted he had “cooked his rear tyres, it was a minor set-up issue that we can sort, but I was working pretty hard in there and the harder I was working the more my glasses steamed up and I had to hold my head at different angles to see out.  Once he was past me I calmed down a bit and my glasses cleared up.  It was a good, clean race and he was very brave hanging on around the outside of me!” 

Austin didn’t let up, crossing the line just 0.697 seconds behind the IMS Motorsport car.  “Once I could see out of my glasses I could catch him again and I reckon if I had one more lap I could have got him.  Still, he drove well. When you end up side by side for several corners, twice, and you finish less than a second off each other, you sometimes don’t mind finishing second when it is a good race.”  Linn was of course even happier with the result: “I could see he was struggling, particularly at the back end and there were a couple of corners where I was a good deal quicker than him.  It was great fun. It was always going to be close but once I was ahead of him I was very aware that he was right up my chuff!”

Paul Slinger