British GT, Oulton Park - Free Practice 2 Notes
The Times Close Up

Times From All Sessions Here >>

Whisper it…..it’s not really that cold here at Oulton Park! With similar conditions being forecast for Monday, there should be a big crowd here to see the opening races; and judging by the closeness of things so far, they could be in for a real treat.

The second of the two hour-long practice sessions saw 32 of the 33 cars taking part, with the M-Sport Audi being the odd-one out after losing third and fourth gears during the first session.

A senior Audi engineer has been dispatched from Ingolstadt, but the car will definitely miss qualifying. Hopefully, the repairs can be effected before Monday, in which case Rembert Berg and Warren Hughes will start from the back of the grid.

The session saw a further improvement in the overall pace, with Allan Simonsen topping the times on 1:35.439.

Earlier on, Phil Keen had taken the #33 Trackspeed Porsche to the top with a 1:35.535 and all three Trackspeed cars featured in the top four for much of the session.

But other marques started to make progress and by the end we had five different models in the top ten, with just under a second separating Simonsen from the tenth-placed BMW Z4 of Joe Osborne and Lee Mowle.

Matt Griffin moved the #21 MTECH Ferrari up to fourth in the second half of the session, displacing Matteo Bobbi in the process; the Italian going well in the Vita4One 458 ahead of his race debut at this circuit.

For much of the session, the John Gaw/Phil Dryburgh PGF-Kinfaun Vantage claimed Aston Martin bragging rights – the AMR MD setting a best time of 1:36.263 – but a 1:35.955 on Jonny Adam’s penultimate lap promoted the SpongeBob Squarepants-powered Beechdean Aston to sixth and simultaneously pushed the #6 Vantage down to ninth.

The #25 United Autosports Audi of Matt Bell and Mark Patterson was going well again in seventh, with a 1:36.049, but perhaps more significantly the South African Bronze driver was well within two seconds of Bell’s times, which augers well for the race and also for Race 1 qualifying.

The two UA McLarens failed to make the top ten by just a few hundredths, with the #24 of Roger Wills and Mark Blundell outpacing the #23 of Zak Brown and Glynn Geddie by 0.270s.

James Walker produced a 1:36.848 on the #14 Fortec Mercedes SLS’s 25th of 26 laps to go 13th, just ahead of the #888 888Optimum BMW of Steve Tandy and Dan Brown.

The two Ecurie Ecosse BMWs were quite a way down the overall times, but the team had elected to use the time to concentrate on tyre-runs for their amateur drivers.

The Blendini Audi finally managed a lengthy run, with a best of 1:39.947 from its 26 laps.

In GT4, an improvement to 1:46.285 saw the #43 Century Ginetta of Zoe Wenham and Declan Jones stay at the top of the class times...

...but we also saw improvements from the Optimum and Redgate/Lifetime G50s in second and third, as well as from the Complete Racing Aston which found three and a half seconds over its earlier pace. The #69 APO Ginetta only managed six laps after missing most of the session with several mechanical issues.

MH