British GT Championship – Thruxton - Saturday Morning Practice
All About Tyres

Glorious sunshine greeted the British GT Championship’s return to Thruxton.

Early news was that neither Mosler will race this weekend, the Rollcentre car was never on the entry list for this round but the absence of the #44 Eclipse Motorsport car is as yet unexplained.

Matt Owen meanwhile has stood down from the Team Modena entry for this race meeting only: Adam Jones will race solo in the #21 Lamborghini and will therefore have to sit through a 90 second (rather than the standard 45 second) pit stop.

The Cadena Sport driving squad will be Paul and Barrie Whight, Paul having “pulled rank, I love racing here. This place is so fast. It’s great to have it dancing around underneath you at Church at 130 plus!”

The ‘Two Richards’ Stanton and Hay are of course returnees to the Championship this weekend too, crewing the #40 Team Trimite Brookspeed Viper. Mr Hay meanwhile is being ribbed by the team with the addition of a prominent ‘No Smoking’ logo on the windscreen, a blunt reference to Richard’s personal vice. There’s news elsewhere on dsc (soon) of Mr. Stanton’s rather exciting plans elsewhere.

The RSS Performance awning iss sporting an impressive triple entry, with the regular #4 and #54 entries being joined this weekend by the #16 GT3 Porsche 997 of Colin Wilmott and Pete Osborne. Graeme Mundy explained that “we are running Colin in the Carrera Cup for the rest of the year and he missed out on the official test here ahead of their race in October. I hope though that he’ll enjoy the weekend and we’ll see where things go.”

The early morning pace was set by the Damax Ascaris, both into the 1:18s immediately, before Adam Jones took to the track and simply monstered the timesheet, a 1:17.452 was followed immediately by a 1:16.689.

A quick spin by the Ginetta on the exit of the chicane in front of David Jones’s #22 Ascari left both entirely unscathed but meanwhile Allan Simonsen was out on track and up to speed, a 1:16.012 showed the capability here, nearly seven-tenths faster than Jones’ best.

Halfway point and the red flags were brought out as a huge plume of smoke appeared at Church: very sadly it was the #50 Morgan, Keith Ahlers at the wheel and the wretched run of luck continued for the Team Aero squad. “We had Keith on the radio saying “Fire!” but other than that and the smoke, I have no idea what’s happened yet.”

The news was very bad indeed, the Aero 8 reappearing on a flatbed some time after the session was completed. “I’m pretty confident that the engine has gone completely so that’s definitely game over for this weekend and probably for the season (the team having already broken its other engine last time out). There was oil in the exhaust, oil in the air intake and a bit of a fire under the engine cover.”

With the smoke cleared the Ahlers smile was back, tucking into a welcome Beechdean ice cream. “It shows how shaken up I am, taking up ice cream at 52!” The team were “off to the pub to regroup, we’re definitely out for the weekend but we’ll see whether there’s any prospect of rebuilding an engine in two weeks.” The damage still isn’t externally visible but one spark plug can’t be removed so the theory is that a piston has lunched itself. Here’s hoping that the popular squad can make it back for Croft.

Third man into the 1:16s was Jonathan Cocker, a 1:16.942 mid-session, the harder rubber suiting the Astons perhaps a little better in terms of consistency than the Ferraris.

And rubber was very much the conversation piece of the morning, with the Aston Martin drivers mainly finding their change to a harder compound to be successful here, whilst the Ferrari men were pondering how a car that is usually light on the rubber looks set to require a tyre change! Any change will have to be done after the standard 45 second stop.

Paul Drayson: “Mark and the boys have been working really hard on set-up and it really shows. This is my very first time here and the place is awesome. I can see now why people get so excited about racing here.

“For us the rubber is fine, very consistent and fast through the stint.”

Adam Wilcox: “The tyres are good to a point, fast consistent and then after about 30 laps they’ve gone completely. We’ll probably need to change tyres.”

At Christians in Motorsport, Allan Simonsen had a similar story: “They aren’t lasting long enough, we’re looking likely to need to change too.” The CiM pitcrew were busy practising tyre changes in anticipation of a hurried change in this afternoon’s race.

There was rather less satisfaction with some of the runners who usually run the standard, hard compound. Thruxton’s uniquely abrasive character means that these will run an even harder compound this weekend.

Alex Mortimer (above): “Our tyres seem fine and hopefully they’ll last the distance, one of our other cars had a tyre blister yesterday though. I reckon a low 1:16 is possible for us in qualifying and in the race we’ll likely be in the high 1:17s or low 1:18s.”

Godfrey Jones: “This would have been absolutely perfect on the rubber we usually run but these are really like blocks of wood, we just can’t get them to work.”

Phil Keen: “We can do 1:18.4s or 18.5s all day on these but no faster really. We really can’t generate any real grip, these just aren’t working like the rubber on the Ferraris.”
GG