British GT Snetterton – Sunday Notes
What’s That Big Yellow Thing In The Sky?

The GT garages opened on Sunday morning at the Norfolk circuit and the teams emerged into unfamiliar conditions. After rubbing their eyes and pinching themselves - just to make sure that they were awake - the realisation dawned; it was dry! And warm! And soon it would even be sunny!

Along with the improved conditions came a healthy crowd to observe proceedings; and the teams grabbed the opportunity of ten minutes of dry running in the 9.00 warm-up.

As expected, Alex Mortimer was quickest in the Ford GT; the laptimes having come down to the 1:08s. In second, after a frustrating Saturday race, was the #1 RPM Viper, in the hands of Paul O’Neill; “I am very, very, very happy that it’s dry today,” said the Liverpudlian. “We only went out to bed some tyres in, but the team didn’t give me any particular instructions, so I decided to see what it could do in the dry. I made a few mistakes around the track, but came back in to find out I was second.”

The two Tech 9 Lamborghinis were third and fourth quickest, with Jonny Cocker revealing that he had been driving Snetterton on the Gran Turismo game in an attempt to improve his times – and failing.

 This weekend was the first time that he had driven the Lamborghini and his total dry experience in the car now amounted to three laps; not helped by being pushed onto the grass by a Ginetta during warm up and necessitating a stop.

How was he enjoying his American adventure? “I’m not living over there, just commuting; but everything about the ALMS is great – the circuits, the set-up, everything. Drayson-Barwell is a great team and we should see a further improvement in the Aston’s performance at Lime Rock.”

In fact there was a unanimous welcome to the dry, with all teams and drivers declaring themselves to be utterly sick and tired of driving on constantly changing tracks in the wet.

There was a highly significant meeting held during the morning, involving the GT team managers and SRO. Several topics were discussed, starting with the future of the F3GT package after recent speculation.

Stephane Ratel revealed that 11 out of 12 F3 teams had signed up for 2009 and that the F3 and GT championships would continue on the same bill for a further three years.

From next year, the BGT will adopt the FIA system of driver grading; meaning that each driver will be classified as A, B or C (equal to Gold, Silver, Bronze in the FIA) with no A/A or A/B pairings allowed.

The teams also voted overwhelmingly against returning to Knockhill or Mondello; with Ratel announcing that there will be one overseas round in 2009 – possibly a return to Spa.