British GT, Oulton Park – Race One
A Great Start For MTECH

All 18 surviving cars (the GT3 Viper suffering meting-ending damage during first qualifying on Saturday) came through warm-up unscathed on Easter Monday at Oulton Park and the sun was doing its best to break through the thick cloud that hung over Cheshire as the start of the day’s two races approached.

For two drivers, the early morning ten-minute session was the first opportunity for track time at this meeting; Kinfaun Racing’s John Gaw – owing to his giving Phil Dryburgh all the seat-time on Saturday, prior to the Porsche’s gearbox shedding a fourth-gear tooth – and Piranha Motorsport’s Simon Mason, who spent the weekend at Thruxton running the team’s Ginetta G40 car. Two other drivers – Joe Osborne Racing’s Osman Yusuf and ABG’s Benjamin Harvey – would be starting their first genuinely competitive races; the sum experience of both drivers being a dozen races apiece in things like MR2s and Caterhams as they collected the signatures for the required licence, where the objective was purely to finish.

The field assembled in the dry but cool and blustery conditions and pulled away at the appropriate time for the pace lap; the pace car arriving back in the pitlane before David Jones had reached Lodge. The Ascari driver kept the pace slow as he led the field towards the lights and was absolutely ready for the moment the reds went out.

The silver car immediately pulled a length clear of the MTECH Ferrari of Duncan Cameron and was unhindered as he found the ideal line into Old Hall. Cameron held on to second at the first corner, but the scramble for places was in full flow behind him; David Ashburn picking up a place in the Trackspeed GT3R as he headed down the inside of  Zak Brown’s Audi. Juan Garriz’ first race start in Britain was even better as he demoted Chris Hyman’s Scuderia and Mike Guasch’s Audi in the Chad 430.    

Jones immediately began to pull away from Cameron and was a second and a half clear as he crested Deer Leap for the first time.

In G4, Jamie Stanley and Chris Bialan held station at the head of the field in the Speedworks G50 and Piranha Lotus respectively, while Rick Pearson enjoyed a good start in the Nissan; moving ahead of the ABG X-Bow of Benjamin Harvey. Phil Dryburgh, meanwhile, was already carving his way through the G4 runners in the GTC Kinfaun Porsche and, in the absence of class opposition, concentrated on getting and staying ahead of the G4 class; something he managed on lap three.

As Jones pulled away from Cameron at the head of the field, the oldest and second youngest drivers in the race were making progress; Ashburn down the inside of Brown on lap two for third, and Garriz doing the same for fourth a lap later. Alas for the young Argentine, an unwelcome advance from a following car resulted in a nudge-induced spin which cost him five places at this early stage in proceedings; and he didn’t help himself when he did the same thing a couple of laps later and dropped to the tail end of the class in his haste to make up ground.

The Ascari quickly pulled out a five second lead over the #2 Ferrari, but Cameron was also able to pull away from the Trackspeed Porsche at the same rate. The gaps stabilised at lap six while Jones took a quick breather, before the Preci Spark driver started to pull away again on lap nine.

In G4 Harvey was getting to grips with the KTM after a slow start and started to chip away at Bialan’s near ten-second lead. Pearson had dropped back after a spin, while Stanley was trying his best to get past the Kinfaun Porsche. Vibe Smed and Osman Yusuf, meanwhile, were someway back in the final two class Ginettas.

The fight for sixth place was intense in the early stages, with hector Lester leading a whole gaggle of cars in the #3 Rosso Verde Scuderia, and he managed to hold the place up to the stops despite finding the handling of the Ferrari to be a long way from ideal. Paul Whight was his main challenger in the Barwell-Cadena Aston, having earlier demoted the Predator Ferrari of Phil Burton, but he couldn’t find a way by before the pit window opened.

Chris Hyman was ahead of Lester for the first six laps, but as he came through Knickerbrook for the seventh time the #21 Ferrari’s engine cut out and he had to pull off track. He managed to restart the engine and was soon back up to racing speed, but the incident had cost a good 50 seconds.

By the time the pit window opened at 23 minutes, Jones had a lead of 10.5s over Cameron; but the Ferrari found itself with a smaller and smaller lead over the chasing Trackspeed Porsche as David Ashburn – driving very smoothly in the new car – brought the gap down to two and a half seconds before he and the Scot pitted.

The pitlane was soon a very busy place as the majority of the field decided to stop at the first opportunity, with Lester, Burton, Whight and Paul Warren also changing over to their pro drivers.

As David Jones and Mike Guasch stayed out – the gap between the Ascari and Audi 22 seconds – Matt Griffin brought the MTECH car back into the race and was soon setting fastest laps. Siso Cunill, however, had difficulty getting the Porsche away from the pits and lost a lot of time. Richard Dean also lost a lot of time, but for an entirely different reason; his and Zak Brown’s driver gradings (B & C) mandating the Audi an additional 30 seconds.  

The leader stayed out until 34 minutes had elapsed, but the stop went smoothly and the Ascari was back out with Godfrey Jones at the wheel as Matt Griffin approached the finish line.

With all stops completed, the order after 21 laps was: 1, 2, 7, 3, 18, 22, 12, 10, 23, 11, 21, 81, 48, 44, 55, 47, 49 and 45. Griffin was four seconds behind Jones, but 35 seconds ahead of Cunill.

Griffin took over a second out of Jones’ lead over the next lap and it was clear that a challenge for the lead wasn’t far away. However, things were about to go badly wrong for the Ascari.

First, the timing screens showed that the Ascari and the Joe Osborne Ginetta were being investigated for a pitlane infringement; but then, and much more significantly, the Ascari was off on the grass at the top of Clay Hill.

Godfrey Jones; “The closing speeds with some of the other cars are huge. I was closing in very fast on the (G4) Nissan, showed him I was there, flashed him, he saw me and moved over but then came back.  The Ferrari was coming and I had to make the move, but the Nissan moved over even more.  Once I had two wheels on the grass I was a passenger.  I was lucky to keep it out of the wall.”

Here's how the following Matt Griffin saw it; “I would have been by him that lap, but as we came through the left hand element of Clay Hill the Nissan was in front. It moved over and moved back a little; it was drifting a little through the corner and doesn’t have the grip that we have.  That left the Ascari with a wheel on the grass and then he lost it, all I saw after that was a cloud of dust and bits of bodywork flying up and I was through into the lead."

The Preci-Spark car managed to get back to the pits, but it was clear that the damage would result in retirement. Joe Osborne, incidentally, was awarded a one-second stop and go for prematurely exiting the pitlane at his stop (the GT4 European Cup champion leaving long tyre marks down the pitlane as he completed his penalty).

This left Matt Griffin with an immense lead and a second BGT win seemed assured. Cunill was second, Allan Simonsen third (having taken third from the Aston a couple of laps earlier), Michael Bentwood fourth, Adam Wilcox fifth and Richard Dean sixth.

Dean was locked in combat with Tom Ferrier’s #10 Ferrari and the #12 version of Wilcox. He briefly got by both Scuds before running wide and dropping back behind them; and this three-way fight was destined to go down to the wire.

At this stage, the battle for GT3 looked over – Griffin leading by 35 seconds, with Cunill keeping Simonsen ten seconds at bay (the #3 Scud still handling badly) – whereas in G4 it was building rapidly.

Rory Butcher was making rapid progress in the X-Bow and was closing at a rate of more than a second a lap on the Speedworks Ginetta of Christian Dick. With nine minutes to go the gap was just a second and a half and a change for the lead seemed inevitable; and indeed Butcher did get ahead on lap 29, having been repelled by some stern defending across the line at the start of the lap. But expectations of the X-Bow building up a big lead over the Ginetta were dispelled when Butcher ran wide at the end of the lap and lost momentum on the grass, allowing Dick back to the class lead.

And things were happening in GT3 also.

The lead Ferrari was suddenly sounding much louder as the exhaust developed a crack and Griffin’s pace began to decrease as he became conscious of a need to keep things cool in the compartment behind his head. At the same time, the Trackspeed Porsche hit trouble. Having found himself able to peg Simonsen some distance behind him, Cunill slowed across the line at the end of lap 31; allowing the Dane to close and pass further round the circuit. The Porsche slowed to a crawl up Clay Hill before picking up speed again, but it wasn’t enough to prevent Michael Bentwood from taking third. A fuel-pickup problem – possibly an electrical issue with the fuel pump – was the initial diagnosis.

Not far behind this drama, Richard Dean finally found the room to get by Adam Wilcox with a great move round Old Hall. He would also close down on and pass the unfortunate GT3R just before the flag. Wilcox, meanwhile, managed to hold off a persistent Ferrier and claim sixth.

As the race entered its final two minutes, Simonsen was closing on Griffin at the rate of five seconds per lap, but the MTECH driver still had a significant advantage and didn’t appear to be in any significant distress. And so it proved; Griffin holding his arm aloft as he crossed the line ten seconds ahead of Simonsen.

“Duncan did a really great job there and I could push from the start of my stint," said Griffin. "There’s really no place to hide this year with so many teams running the same car.  I know he was nervous coming into the year but that showed he had nothing to feel nervous about.

“I got down to some good times very quickly and could hold the pace until we had the problem with the exhaust.  The team were a bit worried that the car wouldn’t last and told me to back off to 1:45s, but we had enough in hand over Allan to bring it home.  I’m delighted with that; really delighted."

Allan Simonsen; “It really showed that we haven’t tested.  I think if we had it might be a different story!

“We haven’t run any distance with these new tyres and we’ve had no long running at all.  We had a really big drop-off on the tyres too.” 

Paul Whight; “That was a real surprise.  We weren’t expecting the car to be so competitive with the mid and rear engined cars here with so many slower corners to get the power down out of, but she ran very well indeed.

“I was delighted to get within a second of Michael there too, very encouraging after a quiet year in 2009."

Might that competitiveness encourage an increased programme this year?

“It might, we wanted to see how competitive we could be and on that evidence it was very encouraging.”

Richard Dean; “With the 30 second penalty, plus the obvious delay through traffic, particularly the two Ferraris, that was very encouraging.

“The car was pretty consistent on the Avons (the first weekend that the R8LMS has run on the British Championship rubber) right through, so I could push quite hard at the end.

“I wasn’t expecting to race of course so really enjoyed the opportunity.”

Siso Cunill; “The car is good; we started sixth and were up to third before the fuel problem came.  But sometimes racing is like this. We can do a good job with the car but it needs some time to unlock some of the pace.”

Adam Wilcox; “It was a good run but we were struggling with tyre drop-off, particularly on the rears. Hats off to Deanny, though - that was a good battle with Tom and I.

“The battle with Tom in particular was interesting.  At first he seemed to be struggling a little bit to find his feet but as soon as I got by him he was right there for the rest of the race.”

In G4, things were a lot closer. Excellent driving from Christian Dick kept the X-Bow in his wake as the final laps were completed, but there was still nothing in it as they started the final lap – probably two lengths at Old Hall. And they were still together as they arrived at Lodge, but the Ginetta driver kept the line and crossed the line 0.436s to the good; much to the delight of a watching Lawrence Tomlinson.

Rory Butcher (on gaining and losing the lead); “I got a wheel in the dirt and lost 3-4 mph which gave him the run back that he needed.

”We’re much better on corner speed but we lose out massively on straight line speed.  It was a good battle but quite frustrating.”

The Piranha Lotus 2-Eleven survived a broken flat-shift (a broken bracket causing a progressive loss of gears) and a fuel starvation problem to claim the final G4 podium place. John Gaw, meanwhile, completed a first BGT race for Kinfaun Racing, still ahead of the G4 field.

It wasn’t a happy first race for the Argentine Chad Ferrari, however, Jose Balbiani being forced into the pits just before the end after the airbox fell off; believed by the team to be related to the earlier incident which had caused Juan Garriz to spin.    

But while there was champagne to be sprayed, the drivers would not be imbibing; because there were only four hours until they’d have to do it all again.

MH & GG