British GT, Oulton Park - Saturday Morning Notes
A Rapid Start For Beechdean

Times From All Sessions Here >>

For the second day running, it was sunny but distinctly chilly at Oulton Park, with Free Practice 1 at nine o’clock officially getting the 2013 season underway.

Alas, we had indeed lost the Barwell Aston after Mark Poole unexpectedly found himself unable to participate in the weekend’s activities; the team being unable to find a replacement at such short notice and unwilling to field Richard Abra as a solo driver. [Editor’s note – you may read elsewhere about unhappiness amongst some teams concerning the single-driver regs. Essentially, this boils down to the wording of the regs not tallying fully with the spirit intended. It would be unhelpful to make a big issue of this and the regs are highly likely to be rewritten to address the issue before the second round at Rockingham] Despite this unfortunate development, a grid of 33 cars is still mightily impressive. The M-Sport Audi, meanwhile, switches to the Invitation class owing to the car's homologation issue. 

Another change to the driver line-up has slipped through without DSC noticing, as Mike Simpson deputises for Lawrence Tomlinson in the #16 Team LNT. The Ginetta boss was overseeing things at Brands Hatch but will be at Oulton on Monday to watch his car.

The Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT3 topped the times in the first hour-long practice session, with a 1:35.744 from Jonny Adam.

Rain throughout last season’s corresponding fixture means time comparisons are meaningless, but the fastest time at the dry 2011 meeting was a 1:36.505, with an official lap record  of 1:38.491 being set by Richard Westbrook in the #1 Trackspeed Porsche in Race 2. One suspects that that may be broken on Monday.

Allan Simonsen worked his usual magic in P2, with a 1:35.857 in the #3 Rosso Verde Ferrari 458 he shares with Hector Lester, which was remarkable given that it is still 2012-spec and that “John told me yesterday that the car hasn’t been fired up since the last race at Donington!” John being John Buchan, who maintains and prepares the car at his garage in Scotland.

“I don’t know yet if that was a good time, or that the others aren’t up to speed yet,” added the Dane. The aforementioned Westbrook placed the fabulously-liveried #32 Trackspeed Porsche of Gregor Fisken third with a 1:35.940. As an aside, Trackspeed team manager Keith Cheetham is sporting a red and black tartan woolly hat this weekend, but when accused of bias towards one of his cars he pointed to his shoes, which sported a Union Flag (representing the #33 GT3-R of Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen). We had no desire to see proof of the rumour that he was wearing spotted boxer shorts in honour of David Ashburn’s and Nick Tandy’s #31!

Blendini Moto’s season isn’t getting off to an easy start, with the #11 Audi R8 LMS of Dom Evans and Tom Roche being involved in a shunt at Lakeside on its outlap. There was damage to the front left and the incident caused the red flag to be brought out while the car was recovered, but there was nothing to suggest that the car wouldn’t be out in P2 at just after noon.

The FF Corse garage was a relaxed place after first practice, which had seen Rob Barff set an eighth-fastest 1:37.122. “We’ve only done two days of testing, due to getting the car quite late and the weather, but it’s going okay so far,” said Team Principal Anthony Cheshire.

He also confirmed that the team will field a Cup Class Ferrari 458 for Jacques Duyver and Charlie Hollings at the Silverstone and Brands Hatch meetings.

Two days of testing was a luxury denied to Dan Eagling and his Redgate/Lifetime team; “The Ginetta is brand new as of Wednesday,” he revealed. “We did some set-up work yesterday, but this morning was the first time the car’s run any laps.”

Eagling is the owner of Lifetime Racing and set up the company after deciding to spend more time at home with the family, rather than working round the world with various race teams. He worked with Peter and Matt Smith in Britcar in 2012 and raced with the father/son combo at the final race, finishing second in class. An agreement was then reached to run Matt in BGT this year, with Eagling expecting to have a managerial role only. However, Peter Smith felt happier if it was Eagling racing with his son, and thus he found himself behind the wheel.

"The aim for this weekend is to finish the races and continue to work on establishing a base set-up," added Eagling. His car finished third in GT4 with a 1:49.517, with Declan Jones going quickest in the Century G50 on 1:47.067.

One final observation – the extra 150kg of ballast that the Ginetta G50 GT4 is mandated to carry this season is bolted to the floor next to the driver’s seat, just like it was in Bradley Ellis’ RPM Ginetta when he had his horrendous crash at Thruxton in 2008. On that occasion the lead was ripped from the floor by the violence of the crash and flew through the windscreen, narrowly missing the driver in the process. It is to be hoped that a safer solution to the weight issue is sorted soon.

MH