FIA GT - Silverstone

FIA GT - Free Practice 2

An almost incident-free second practice session took place under overcast skies on a completely dry track. The pace sped up a little at the front of GT1, whilst slowing slightly in GT2 and the Citation Cup, the ‘class within a class’ gentleman’s race for GT1 cars, debuting here at Silverstone.

Former F1 champion and hero of the nation Nigel Mansell provided some of the very limited drama as he found the limits of the Ferrari a couple of times, although to be fair he has not had a large amount of track time in the car. One of his ‘incidents’ involved Vilander in the #50 Ferrari, contact between the two sending ‘our Nige’ off the track. Both were called to the clerk of the course at the end of the session. A slapped wrist for one, or both, of them no doubt? Nevertheless, Scuderia Ecosse informed us that Vilander apologised to Mansell and Mansell was still having a lot of fun, plus he is to qualify # 63.

The main incident was the lovely ‘old’ Ferrari 550 of the Solution F team shedding its rear valance as it crossed the start/finish line. The errant bodywork slithered to a halt against the pitwall, but the session was red flagged for it to be retrieved. It didn’t take long for the marshals to collect it, intact, and deliver it back to the Solution F garage, so the session resumed with just over 20 minutes left on the clock.

PK had led the timesheets for most of the session, which remained the case to the chequered flag, Kumpen’s 1:44.665 was six 1/1000ths faster than the best time set by the Wendlinger/Sharp Aston Martin this morning. The session was kind to Corvette, with the newer Carsport Holland C6.R just one tenth behind. Third in the session, just seven 1/1000ths further back was the lead Jetalliance Aston Martin, again not doing many laps, choosing to conserve tyres instead, which is a useful strategy when the car set-up is good, drivers happy and a maximum of three sets of tyres for the weekend allowed under the rules.

GT2 at the restart was Porsche, Porsche, Ferrari - Ebimotors from Tech9 and AF Corse’s #51 but Ferrari dominance was resumed when Ruberti went a second faster than the Ebimotors car, finishing with a best of 1:49.781 and Kirkaldy improved to end the session half a second further down.

Tom Cloet made sure that the Corvette/Belgian driver lead combination in GT1 was mirrored in Citation with a couple of 1:50.7s being good enough to go into qualifying with the upper hand.

The only other Corvette not yet mentioned appeared to have struggled on its Pirellis though, Luke Hines needing until the dying moments of the session to drag the PSI car ahead of the GT2 leaders, so the team that finished second at Zhuhai only managing 14th fastest in this session. Qualifying takes place this evening, at 17:25.

Paul Slinger