British GT, Knockhill – Saturday Notes 1
Greetings From Sunny Scotland

Nice surprise #1 – the long, long journey up the M6 (there are surely few things more depressing than getting back into your car at Preston services to be told by your satnav to “stay on this road for 147 miles”) was blessed with sun and blue skies from just north of Manchester all the way up to Fife.

Nice surprise #2 – all 15 cars on the entry list have turned up and were out on track for free practice at 11.00.

The morning session wasn’t without its surprises, however, with two red flags disrupting proceedings and reducing the running time (no extension to the session being allowed due to the packed timetable). The first of these befell the Preci-Spark Ascari, which suffered a front-suspension failure at Scotsman, while Vibe Smed dropped the #47 Century Motorsport Ginetta into the gravel with about 15 minutes remaining.

Stephane Daoudi set the fastest time – on new rubber – in the Rosso Verde Scuderia, with Adam Wilcox two tenths behind him in the CCTV Predator Ferrari. Matt Griffin was third, but was trying to work out why he was a second off his 2009 pace; the new ECU from Kessel not impressing him.

The Irish driver has had an interesting couple of weeks, with the arrival of his first child Aoife (pronounced ‘eefa’) resulting in a few sleepless nights since her arrival in the early hours of April 27th; and with his participation in the GT Open at Nurburgring last weekend.

Piers Masarati was happy with Chad’s morning, despite his having had to drive back down to Birmingham on Friday evening to collect some spares for the cars; and despite the engine mountings on his VW breaking when he arrived back at the circuit this morning.

Chris Hyman was the fastest of the Chad drivers in the first session – the South African producing a fifth-fastest 51.043 after driving for most of the session; Dan Brown would get his chance in the second – while Tom Ferrier and Paul Warren still had work to do in finding a good balance in the #10 car. Juan Garriz, meanwhile, was in the wars on his Knockhill debut – a brush with the barrier removing a chunk of bodywork from the rear of the #11 430 – and Jose Balbiani was praying for rain after a frustrating session.

The Piranha Motorsport Lotus 2-Eleven was the fastest of the G4 runners after the first practice session, but Simon Mason explained that they very nearly didn’t make the trip north; “We’ve had a lot of niggly problems since Oulton Park and only yesterday traced the biggest issue to a fuel pressure regulator – if we hadn’t there would have been no point coming.

“The car feels great round here today, but we ran without ballast this morning while we checked everything about. We’ll put [the 40kg] in for this afternoon’s session, but we’re putting it a long way forward and are hoping that it will actually improve the handling.”

The Lotus’s ballast includes 20kg to bring it up to the required minimum weight, but the KTM X-Bow will have to carry 80kg of lead following its pace at Oulton Park – 35kg of success ballast and an extra 55kg following a ruling from the GT4 Bureau in Belgium. The ABG-run car will however have Rory Butcher on board and he knows Knockhill as well as anyone.

Series co-ordinator Benji Franassovici was disappointed to have lost two entries just before the weekend, but is confident of an increase in numbers – to four or five cars – in the GT Cup class for the remainder of the season, as well as a grid in excess of 20 cars for the next meeting at Spa in early June.

MH