British GT, Silverstone – Saturday Afternoon Notes
The Pace Quickens

Despite the gloomy prognosis, the Rollcentre Mosler was to be found lapping the 3.2 mile Bridge GP Circuit – the first time for five years, incidentally, that the BGT has used this configuration – at a consistent, if not hugely rapid, pace during the second of the day’s free practice sessions.

With slicks now fitted, the times rapidly came down in the opening minutes and it felt more like a qualifying session than free-practice. Allan Simonsen eventually ‘took pole’ in the #3 Rosso Verde Ferrari, with a 1:51.913 in the closing stages, bumping Richard Westbrook from the top spot in the process. But it was the Dane’s teammate that DSC needed to talk to:

Hector, did you really go on holiday over the Rockingham weekend?

“Yes, it’s true,” confirmed the Irishman. “My wife was telling me that we needed a family holiday, and what with Allan being unavailable – and I don’t really like Rockingham – I thought ‘why not?’ So we went to Monaco instead!”

The day got off to a difficult start when the #3 Ferrari Scuderia caused a red flag within the first five minutes of the first session, after a wheel nut came loose and stranded the car out on the circuit; “I thought the gearbox had gone, but thankfully that wasn’t the case,” said Lester.

Richard Westbrook’s teammate for this race is Philip Walker, so how did this come about? “Peter Bamford had arranged this race with RPM at the start of the season, so a drive in the Ford this weekend was never on my schedule,” he explained. “But I enjoyed Rockingham so much that I asked David Ashburn if he had a seat available and here we are.”

Walker’s sum total of Porsche racing experience amounts to, er, none whatsoever; “I used to own a Porsche road car, but I’ve never driven a race car. There’s no particular reason for that, it’s just the way things have panned out.

“My first experience of driving the car, then, was when I started in the wet this morning; very interesting and very enjoyable. It’s a very nimble car – more akin to the classics that I race in the way that it moves around – and it has great traction out of the slower corners; a delight to drive.”

And how was he getting on with his new teammate? “What an opportunity to drive with Richard! He’s been giving me lots of advice on how to drive the car; not overloading me with information, but just making sure I understand the important bits.”

Just a little bit further down the pitlane was the Barwell/Cadena/Beechdean garage, with the two DBRS9s under its care; but Mark Lemmer revealed that the Astons weren’t getting on well with the Avon wet tyres; “The car is very competitive in the dry, but the new Avon wet looks to be designed for mid-engine cars and we just can’t get any grip out of the rears.” With a wet qualifying session being a real possibility, was this a concern? “Not really,” he continued, “we’ve got four good drivers and so qualifying isn’t so important in a race of this length.”

Chris Needell, meanwhile, explained that the Beechdean car had been upgraded to 2010-spec, “It’s had an engine upgrade – basically the final thing that needed doing. We then gave it a shakedown at Snetterton last Tuesday with Andrew and that went well.

“The Cadena car will be back for the Snetterton and Brands rounds, and we’re looking to see if any more rounds are feasible. This race shows that if you race on a proper circuit, you can get a good field; even in the present environment. There’s no point in us going to places like Knockhill, however, as the Aston just doesn’t work there.”

The MTECH Ferrari was only ninth fastest, almost 3.5s off Simonsen’s time, and Matt Griffin knew that he had a job to do in qualifying; “We’ve had a number of issues that have held us back, and now we’re going into qualifying before the car is properly sorted; that’s not going to make it easy.”

The ABG-run Invitation class KTM X-Bow of Colin and Sam Mowle was the quickest of the non-GT3 cars, with a 2:01.311 – an extra 60bhp and different dampers being the reason for its non-inclusion in the G4 class – while the Piranha Lotus was the fastest of the G4 cars on 2:02.199.

The clouds thickened once more during the afternoon and rain fell during the Formula Snooze race, but as the late-afternoon qualifying session approached, the track began to dry again and patches of blue sky were spotted in the distance.