British GT Season Preview
Part 2 – GT4

In contrast to the booming GT3 field, the second class in the championship begins the season with just five cars at Oulton Park; but while this could be seen as disappointing, the fact is that the highest number of GT4s seen together at Oulton is eight, and that was in 2007. And the good news is that the five heading to Cheshire this year are solid, full-season entries that will be joined by other cars during the season.

So we have four Ginettas and one Aston Martin GT4, but what is most striking is the youth of much of the field, with six of the ten drivers under 24 years old; and no driver pairing is more youthful than that of Century Motorsport, where Zoe Wenham and Declan Jones can barely muster 35 years between them. Wenham returns to the team and the series with a full season under her belt, but with a new co-driver and car, while Jones is making his BGT debut after racing in the Ginetta Cup.

By comparison, James May and Alex Osborne over at APO Sport are positively ancient, at 23 and 28 respectively, but they too will be building on their own BGT experience. They both displayed impressive pace in 2012 and only bad luck prevented them from taking a win. Expect that to change in 2013.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Dan Eagling racing in British GT – the last time being 2004, when he co-drove Colin Blower’s Vauxhall VX220 – but he returns in a Ginetta fielded by his own team, Redgate Lifetime, and is joined by Matt Smith, who has only raced Ginettas in his career. Still only 33, Eagling won’t take long to get back up to speed behind the wheel and the two should quickly make a potent pairing.

And there’s more Ginetta experience over at Optimum Motorsport, where 19-year-old Ryan Ratcliffe and 38-year-oldRick Parfitt Jr unite in the fourth G50. Both drivers come to the BGT after racing with the sadly now defunct Piranha Motorsport in G40s, but despite the age difference, it is Ratcliffe who is the more experienced racer. Optimum have proved that they engineer a very good race car, so again this team should bond quickly.

 The balance of performance hasn’t been kind to the Ginetta G50, with the car’s base weight being increased from 1050kg to 1200kg for the 2013 season; an increase of 15%. While this won’t affect  the intra-marque racing, it will certainly affect the balance of power between the Ginetta and the Aston Martin GT4, which weighs in at 1350kg.

Amazingly, the Complete Racing entry is the first time we will have seen an Aston in the category in BGT for a full season. The experienced Steve Chaplin joins forces with youngster Tom Wilson and will be well-prepared for the season, being the first to submit a GT4 entry back in December. If the Aston can genuinely mix it with the Ginettas after several seasons of inequality, then surely more examples will be tempted to join in.

So those are the five entries for Oulton. A sixth guaranteed entry will appear (from Silverstone onwards, probably) in the form of the GPRM Toyota GT86, while Lotus UK is again working hard on finding drivers for its brace of Evoras. We should also see more Ginettas at various times during the season.

So while the GT4 cars may be few in number, we could potentially see some of the best racing in the category since its introduction.

MH