* New Lap Record

Neither driver made a mistake and Tandy’s pace helped set up the win for himself and David Ashburn, while only a problem with Hector Lester’s seatbelts at the stop kept the Rosso Verde duo off the podium. In truth, it should have been a double top for Tandy and Ashburn, with the English driver’s post race explanation of ‘build-up on the tyres’ as the reason for his slowing down near the end of Race 1 being rather unconvincing. But with the #31 supposedly here only for a one-off outing (but don’t be surprised to see it on the Silverstone entry at least), it made sense to ensure that the full-season entry of Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen gathered as many points as possible.

Fine drives too from the #15 Fortec Motorsports pairing of Benji Hetherington and Ollie Hancock. Hetherington took pole for Race 1 in the Mercedes AMG SLS and led throughout his stint in Monday’s opener.

Yes, he was a Silver driver in a field of mainly Bronze drivers, but he hadn’t sat in the car prior to the weekend and thus had little opportunity to find a set-up. In addition, he was carrying the 65kg mandatory ballast for the Silver-Silver pairing. Hancock was in the same situation, and he had little chance of holding onto his lead; and indeed he had dropped three places within half-a-dozen laps. But his defence of fourth place was heroic stuff, placing the big car on the right part of the narrow track in such a way as to prevent the gaggle of cars behind from being offered a gap big enough to make a move. Just one slip up from Hancock would have seen the Mercedes plummet down the standings; but that slip up never happened and, following the #23 McLaren’s demise, the Daventry team were able to celebrate a podium finish in their first ever GT race.

“I had to be the world’s widest Mercedes, to be honest!  I wanted this result for the boys at Fortec, more than anything.  They’ve worked their nuts off over the last two weeks.  The cars were very late and it was the first time we drove them in the dry on Friday.  It didn’t quite go to plan, on Friday, so we changed it overnight.  We’re improving every time we go out, and it’s becoming more drivable now.  The Porsches were absolutely rapid, I couldn’t keep up with them.  I put Nick on the grass, and I didn’t realise I’d done it, and I wanna apologise for that.”

And Fortec were able to celebrate a top-six finish in Race 2 when Jason Minshaw brought the sister car home in sixth place after a solid stint from James Walker. Their first race had lasted about six seconds, so this was a just reward.

Unluckiest man of the weekend, without a doubt, was Andrew Howard, who found himself taken out of both races by a Trackspeed Porsche; with that Porsche being excluded from the results on both occasions. The finger was pointed at Gregor Fisken in Race 1, with the Scot found guilty of causing the crash which took out the #14 Fortec SLS at the first corner and which also led to the demise of the Beechdean Aston four laps later.

The team rebuilt the front left corner of the Vantage, but with just over ten minutes of Race 2 remaining, Howard found himself being harpooned by the #33 Porsche of Jon Minshaw, who had got Knickerbrook horribly wrong and was literally launched by the kerbs into the #007. Poor old SpongeBob Squarepants must be wondering what he’s got himself into!

As well as exclusion from the results, Minshaw picked up 4 penalty points on his licence and was fined £500 for “Driving in a manner not compatible with general safety”. Scant consolation for Beechdean, but they’ll no doubt bounce back at Rockingham in May.

The Beechdean/Trackspeed shunt brought out the Safety Car, but a few corners further along the track a troubled debut weekend for IDL-CWS was coming to a fiery conclusion with Colin White rolling out of his well-ablaze Ginetta G55 GT3. The fire looks to have started on Clay Hill, when a broken exhaust caused a fuel line to break.

By the time the car arrived at Lodge it was burning fiercely and White did well to find the marshal’s post at Deer Leap before exiting [the Team LNT G55 had met a similar end in Race 1 at Lodge Corner – we don’t know yet if this was coincidence or a common fault]. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to kill the ignition before escaping and the fire was thus well fed by pumping fuel for the next five minutes at least. Heroic efforts by the marshals – which must have pretty much exhausted the circuit’s supply of extinguishant – eventually saw the fire brought under control and the race was able to resume with two minutes on the clock.

Before the caution period, the race was building nicely to its conclusion with Mark Patterson having fought his way through to second in the #25 United Autosports Audi R8 LMS ultra he shared with Matt Bell.

He was facing a gap of eight seconds to the leader, Ashburn, but despite lapping quicker found himself stuck behind the Nissan GT-R of Mark Cole, who was himself fighting with the #11 Blendini Audi R8 of Tom Roche. Patterson got himself in position at the restart and made sure he was past Cole almost immediately the race went green again.

The remaining time allowed for two laps and the Audi was 1.199s adrift of the #31 Porsche at the end of the penultimate lap. By Knickerbrook the gap had shrunk to a car’s length and it was now a drag race to the finish. As Ashburn slowed for Lodge Corner, the Audi was alongside but on the outside. The Trackspeed man knew a switch-back was coming, but he was able to place his car on the part of the track Patterson needed and robbed his pursuer of momentum; taking the win by just 0.280s.

"After the restart I could see Mark was pushing and I just put the car where I needed to,” said the Trackspeed boss. “I knew I had it when I left Lodge and made it hard for him up Deer Leap. Yes I am definitely retiring. With a result like this of course I'm retiring, it can't get any better can it?"

“Two moral victories," said Tandy "The second race today, we won because we had a great stop.  We came in, I had a great in lap.  We had the ten second penalty and still came out in the lead.  David had a great outlap, and once we’d come out in the lead and the challenge disappeared from the Aston, pretty much game over.  It was a lot easier than we expected. The pitstops are so much easier when there’s a guy in front of you, you can kinda judge what he’s doing as you come into the pitlane.  That’s ideal, especially when it’s someone like Allan.  You know he’s going to be pushing on the way into the pitlane at the maximum so you can kinda gauge your speed in and use him as a reference.  I might persuade some others to retire, because I like winning and I like champagne, and I like racing.  Any more retirees, I’m more than happy to participate!”

“That was beautiful, beautiful," enthused Patterson. "He pushed me into the mens’ room over there somewhere!  He did the right thing.  I had him on the outside of a very dangerous corner, you can’t accelerate there and I tried.  He said ‘I’m not gonna let you go there’.  I lost a few yards at the restart, I had to pass a car but it wasn’t for the position, the guy kindly let me through, but I lost a few yards.  In a lap we caught him under good braking – the Audi has great braking.  It’s all speculation but I felt we might have caught him without the safety car.  Great fun.”

“The car was not quite how we expected it to be at the start of the race, but I could keep in touch with the leaders; eventually pitting in sixth place,” added Bell. “We had a great pit stop by the crew; they have been getting better and better but today was exceptional and we actually jumped two cars during the pit stop. Mark took over and did a great job. He didn’t waste any time in moving up the grid. The safety car didn’t quite work in our favour. Mark was so close, and as I watched them going side by side on the last lap, I was biting my nails. It’s a great result; I couldn’t be happier.”

Phil Keen drove well in both races on his fulltime return to the BGT, and deserved his win in Race 1; “Brilliant.  We’re really pleased.  David and Nick aren’t doing the whole year anyway, so if we’d finished second it would’ve been as good as a win for us.  John drove brilliantly, and we’re looking forward to race two now.  The new car is much better than last year’s.  They’ve hit us a bit, we’ve got a big restriction on the power so we struggle to get alongside people on the straight, been hampered for speed.  The car’s a big improvement from last year.  We’ve good grids and good drivers here – I’m looking forward to race two.”

The BMW Z4 wasn’t the best car to have at Oulton, with both 888Optimum and Ecurie Ecosse/Barwell finding their cars to be quick through corners but at a significant speed disadvantage along the straights. Despite this, Olly Bryant and Marco Attard saw the first weekend of their racing partnership yield a sixth and a third in the two races, leaving them with 23 points and third place in the Championship standings.

Bryant was involved in the battle for fourth behind Hancock in Race 1, but was pushed onto the grass by Vita4One driver Matteo Bobbi as the queue of cars slowed following Glynn Geddie’s demise in the #23. He ended the race seventh, but this became sixth following Gregor Fisken’s exclusion. Attard got revenge for the #27 Ferrari’s move when he took third from Bobbi’s teammate Palmer at Cascades on the final lap of Race 2. He had earlier been very fortunate to avoid becoming involved in the Minshaw/Howard shunt, but didn’t allow the incident to affect him and he took third from Hector Lester just before the Safety Car was scrambled.

"Hats off to Marco and the team for an excellent job this weekend,” said Bryant. “We know the key is to be quick and consistent and to stay out of trouble. A huge amount of work has gone in from everyone at Ecurie Ecosse and Barwell Motorsport in the off-season to pull this deal together so a podium is very rewarding!"

"What a great result at Oulton Park following two eventful races!” said Attard. “Thanks to the Barwell crew who did a great job, our engineers Andy and Adam and the whole Ecurie Ecosse team; not forgetting Olly Bryant who drove two great races and was a huge support to me."

The #78 sister car of Ron Johnson and Piers Johnson had a steady run to a finish in both races, thus achieving the goal of the weekend which was to give the two drivers more time in the seat after a limited testing programme.

The 888Optimum BMW of Steve Tandy and Dan Brown was another to suffer at the hands of the Vita4One 458 when side-by-side contact resulted in a wheel valve being torn off the #888’s left-rear tyre and an enforced stop which dropped the car to 20th by the finish. Bobbi’s car was also damaged in the incident and retired soon afterwards. Race two went much better for the 888 pair, with Tandy finding himself in tenth place after the stop.

He passed the #8 BMW soon afterwards then moved up to sixth by the caution following the demise of #007 and #33 and via a drive-through for #18. He held on to this place through the final two laps and then gained another position following Jay Palmer’s post-race ten-second penalty for rejoining the circuit in an unsafe manner.

For Lee Mowle and Joe Osborne, this was a weekend of positives and some painful lessons. The positives were that Mowle’s pace was good on his GT3 debut and that the car and team performed well. The painful parts seemed to revolve around the steering wheel, which has to be removed at driver-changes. In Race 1, the traction control knob on the wheel was inadvertently turned down during the changeover, with the first Osborne knowing about it was when he found himself facing the wrong way at the chicane. In Race 2, the emergency gear-shift button was accidentally turned on, meaning Mowle had to manually shift down. The error led to the car retiring later in the race, with the team believing that the gearbox was at risk; “We haven’t been able to do any race-simulation runs during testing because of the weather,” said Joe Osborne, “and it’s possible that these issues would have come to light during those had we been able to do them. On the other hand, we could have gone three years without something like this happening. All part of the learning curve, I suppose.”

Aston Martin have had better weekends, it has to be said. The weekend began with the news that the Barwell Aston wouldn’t be taking part and was followed by the Beechdean car’s misfortunes and a retirement for the PGF-Kinfaun Vantage in Race 2; and a tenth-place finish for Phil Dryburgh and John Gaw in Race 1 is in no way indicative of the way this season will pan out for the marque.

The fact that the Complete Racing span out of the first race and failed to start the second just about sums up the weekend. Expect much more at Rockingham.

Reigning champions Motorbase can take away many positives from their weekend at Oulton, with Ahmad Al Harthy impressing on his BGT debut; the Omani driver qualifying third for race 1 and staying in that place before handing the #1 Porsche 997 GT3-R over to Michael Caine. Despite also having to carry 65kg, the 2012 champ hung on to fourth while pushing Hancock all the way to the line. The car’s qualifying position for the second race meant that it would have an awful lot to do on Monday afternoon, but ninth place was still a solid result and Al Harthy – who apparently had Wigan goalie (and fellow Omani) Ali Al Habsi cheering him on – was happy with his lot; “It’s been a very, very positive weekend for us”, he said. “It’s been extremely challenging, of course, but I’m delighted to have started my GT career so well with two good results. We knew we had a strong race car - fourth was a really good result from the first race - and the team did a good job with the pit-stop. Michael worked his way back through very well with some great laps.

“Race two was very difficult at the start. Michael had to work really hard to try and gain some positions from so far down the grid and he was held up quite badly. When he handed the car over to me I had a lot of work to do, but I did exactly what the team told me and we managed to climb into the points which was great. Our early pit-strategy worked very well.

“I really am very grateful to everyone who came to Oulton over the weekend to support me”, he added. “There’s a family from Oman, who are currently in Cardiff, and they drove all the way to see me race; it was great seeing them. It was a pleasure to welcome Ali to Oulton Park too; we’re both very proud to represent Oman in the UK in our respective sports.”

It was the opposite story, however, for Gregor Fisken and Richard Westbrook, who had a weekend to forget. The #32 Trackspeed Porsche was going well in Race 2, with Westbrook up to fourth following Matt Griffin’s Ferrari’s demise after 11 laps and he hung on to that position to the stops. With no time penalty to serve, things were looking good, but the car’s starter motor had other ideas and refused to cooperate. By the time the Scot managed to get away, the damage was done and he had dropped to 20th place. That he subsequently finished 12th was therefore quite an achievement, but after the Race 1 exclusion things can only get better.

For MTECH, too, the only way is up after an expensive weekend in Cheshire. A good qualifying session for debutant Derek Johnston in the #41 Ferrari was negated by a race-ending spin after just one lap in Race 1 (which caused a Safety Car to be deployed), while the Nottingham racer was involved in a hefty shunt at Knickerbrook in Race 2 which destroyed the front end of his own car and inflicted major damage on the then-GT4-leading #69 APO Ginetta G50.

Meanwhile, an eighth-place finish in the first race (a pitstop problem costing almost half a minute) was followed by an oil leak in the second for Duncan Cameron and Matt Griffin. The chances are that both cars will be 2013-spec by the time we next see them.

McLaren’s weekend was only marginally better than Aston Martin’s. We lost the #24 MP4-12C on Saturday when Roger Wills had his off at Druids – thus depriving Mark Blundell of his first race at Oulton Park for a couple of decades; and the crowd of seeing the former F1 racer in action – and the #23 suffered gearbox failure whilst lying third in Race 1. The United Autosports mechanics worked their magic to get the car repaired for Race 2, but a starting position of 18th left Glynn Geddie and Zak Brown with too much to do in such a tough field; but they at least claimed their first point of the season with tenth in Race 2.

“It was a tough weekend for our #23 car,” said Brown. “We didn’t get the results that were representative of what the McLaren has available. We were disappointed with the gearbox failure in the first race, and the second race just did not go our way. It is great to see Mark and Matt on the podium after challenging hard for the win. Some ups and downs but overall a good result.”

“It’s been an exceptionally cold weekend and one which has had a number of ups and downs,” added United MD Richard Dean. “We had a badly damaged McLaren in qualifying which we had to withdraw, and a podium position, which was there for Glynn and Zak, was lost because of a gearbox issue. Then, the Audi pulled it around in the final race. It was a good close race with a great fight at the finish. The pace of the McLaren with Zak and Glynn gives us hope that we will be competitive this year, and we can see that the Audi is a real contender. It’s a bit of a relief to see that our competitors are not running away with it even at this early stage of the season, and we are in the hunt. We have a lot of work to do. This is a tough championship now so whoever wins will be deserving of it.”

While the UA McLarens were still 2012-spec, the Jones brothers had a brand-new car in the Preci-Spark garage; but with the car only arriving a couple of weeks ago, testing opportunities have been limited. 13th and eighth in the two races may look disappointing at first glance, but the team will have gained much valuable data from the weekend and will only get quicker from here on in.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – you write off the Joneses at your peril!

M-Sport’s debut weekend met a significant, if unexpected, obstacle when news came through last Thursday that the 2013 upgrade to the R8 LMS ultra had not been approved by the FIA. This meant that the #10 of Warren Hughes and Rembert Berg had to switch to the Invitation class; and to add insult to injury they had to remove some aero on the instructions of the SRO. Add to this a gearbox failure which kept them out of qualifying and meant two starts from the rear of the grid and you’d think the whole meeting was a disaster. But the Audi is there for the purposes of getting the team familiar with GT racing ahead of the arrival of the Bentley Continental GT3 later this season, and so a top result wasn’t the main goal of the weekend.

As things turned out, 17th and 14th-place finishes were commendable in the circumstances, with both drivers and team – who improved their pitstop time from 76 seconds in Race 1 to 67 seconds in Race 2 – doing a good job. If the homologation issue can be resolved ahead of Rockingham, we’re sure to see the car performing more prominently in Round 2.

Two race finishes for Blendini Moto must have felt like wins for the Dom Evans and Tom Roche after they started the weekend on virtually no testing (following a gearbox failure) and then shunted at the start of practice on Saturday morning. The team – under the tutelage of Adam Wilcox – recovered from these setbacks in fine style and recorded two 18th place finishes. It will be interesting to see what this team can achieve as it gathers more experience at this level.

The two ‘Corse’ Ferraris involved in the race – AF and FF – had productive weekends, with both the #13 458 of John Dhillon and Aaron Scott and the #18 of Gary Eastwood and Rob Barff enjoying finishes in both races; the best for both cars being seventh – AF in Race 1 and FF in Race 2.

Only a drive-through for the #18 in the second race (unsafe release at the stop) blotted the copybook, but the objective for both teams had been to finish the races and that was accomplished.

John Dhillon’s pace has stepped up markedly from last year and that augers well for the season, while Eastwood was happy to leave Oulton with points already in the bag.

The two JRM Nissan GT-Rs were very late entrants to the meeting and neither Jody Fannin (#230) nor Mark Cole (#320) had more than a handful of laps in the cars under their belts before coming to Oulton. Despite this, both drivers acquitted themselves well, with only a DNF for Cole in Race 1 – when he found oil dropped by the LNT Ginetta – spoiling a good set of results. Even with an extra 20 seconds to serve at his stop, Fannin finished his GT3 debut weekend with 11th and 12th place finishes, while Cole was able to come home 16th in Race 2 on his return to racing after a lengthy sabbatical.

“It was fun but hard work,” said Fannin. “The opening laps of Race 1 were really good as I was right up there fighting for position. The car felt good and I was challenging for third. Then I had to pit and stop – it wasn’t too bad getting out and back in the car actually – but when I went back out I was caught in traffic and having to keep an eye on my mirrors. The track is narrow and passing can be hard, plus the cold temperatures meant I struggled to get temperature into the tyres. All the same we finished our first race, my first in GT3, and I learnt a lot to take forward into the second race. In Race 2 we started OK and I spent the opening laps chasing the Fortec Mercedes; then, after the stop, I was quicker than most ahead of me and was looking to make up more places but ran out of laps. Overall I was pretty pleased; we can take confidence from this result and come back even stronger. JRM did a great job all weekend and I really enjoyed working with them.”

“It was very disappointing to retire from Race 1 as I thought we could have made up a lot more places,” said Cole. “Race 2 was obviously a lot more exciting and a lot more representative of our potential. It was good to be back racing and pushing hard, gaining places. It’s a shame I couldn’t do this in race 1 as well, but hopefully this has been a marker of how hard we can race. I really enjoyed driving the Nissan GT-R in a very competitive field, and racing with a team of JRM’s calibre.”

“The car has run well all weekend,” added JRM Team Principal James Rumsey. “Bearing in mind the huge 34 car field, the largest in recent years, plus the calibre of the cars, teams, and drivers competing this weekend, qualifying inside the top ten for Race1 was a very positive start. In the first race Mark was very unfortunate to go out as he was making good progress. Jody did a brilliant job in both races and got to grips with the Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 very quickly. The fact that both could get in the car and be competitive from the off shows the upgrades Nismo have introduced over the winter have worked and we’ve got a very positive baseline to build on. We hope we’ll be back for the remainder of the season to help Mark and Jody in their quest for podiums and points.”

It was a great shame that the GT4 class found itself a car down by the end of the first day, when Matt Smith unfortunately found himself crashing out of qualifying just a few yards from where the #24 McLaren had come to a sudden stop. The Redgate Lifetime Ginetta hadn’t turned a wheel before practice that morning, but now it was being loaded into the team truck for the run back to Norfolk with significant damage. Dan Eagling will rebuild the car before Rockingham, but the team will be playing catch-up from this point.

Steve Chaplin lifted Aston Martin spirits on Saturday when he claimed the marque’s first class pole in BGT in the Complete Racing Vantage GT4 for Race 1.

Alas, it all went wrong on Monday when, having lost the lead to James May in the #69 APO Ginetta, Chaplin spun at Deer Leap and contacted the tyre wall heavily. He was able to drive back to the pits and into retirement, but the team just ran out of time to get the car ready for Race 2 and the Aston was pushed off the grid. A great shame.

The victory in both races went to the Century Motorsport duo of Zoe Wenham and Declan Jones in the #43 Ginetta, with 17 year old Jones marking himself out as a real talent on the evidence of this weekend.

"That was really good fun, and it was really tight at the end," said Wenham, who was celebrating her first wins in the BGT. "Declan has done a great job this weekend and I'm pleased I held off Rick at the end there. It's great to leave Oulton leading the championship."

"Can’t get much better than that; two out of two and started pole as well," said Jones. "I pulled out twenty-odd seconds on my stint, handed it over.  We were behind, then the car that was in the lead had an off.  Then we were leading, had a nice gap and then the safety car came out and we didn’t think it would restart but it did.  It was close, those last two laps… But Zoe brought it home in first.  You can’t complain, I’m made up.”

May and teammate Alex Osborne had fought their way to the front of the class as the last quarter of an hour of Race 2 approached, but fell victim to Derek Johnston’s error at Knickerbrook and suffered major damage. Somehow, May managed to get the car to the finish and third place, but this should have been APO’s maiden win. Worse, however, is that the impact may have broken the chassis. Whether this will prevent them from getting to Rockingham remains to be seen.

The Optimum pairing of Ryan Ratcliffe and Rick Parfitt Jr had a troubled qualifying with various issues, but bounced back to take two second places and second in the standings.

Hopefully the remaining races of the season will see the class grow and the attrition diminish, as there is clearly a high level of talent in the ‘second division’ of the BGT.

There is now a five-week gap until the second round of the season in Corby, with a two-hour race on the International Long Circuit of the Rockingham Speedway; with another large and quality grid being guaranteed.

MH