ARTURA VERSUS MUSTANG ROUND TWO?
The Mclaren Artura was immediately competitive on its arrival in British GT last season. Optimum Motorsport pair Jack Brown and Charles Clark had a mathematical chance of clinching the GT4 title with two races to spare, only for luck to desert them across the final three races, while a purple patch for Academy Motorsport drivers Erik
Evans and Matt Cowley snatched away the crown on the swansong for the outgoing version of the Ford Mustang.
While Clark pursues GT3 opportunities,
Brown will seek to make amends with Optimum after his Silver title consolation prize. He’s joined by 17-year-old Zac Meakin, who impressed team boss Shaun Goff in testing after racing a Team Parker-run Artura last year and contesting the GT4 Winter Series in Elite Motorsport’s example. “The overall championship is what we were there to do [in 2023], so we’re hoping to put that right this year,” states Goff. “We’ve got the same core team working on the car and we’ve refined some of the niggly issues which eluded us last year.”
Evans will bid for a second successive title with Academy’s new Mustang alongside Marco Signoretti, while Cowley will do likewise aboard a Paddock Motorsport Mercedes shared with Ed Mcdermott, entered in Pro-am. That deal came together “quite late in the off-season” for Paddock boss Martin Plowman, whose team will also run an Artura for Alex Walker and Blake Angliss and the Mclaren 720S GT3 he shares with Mark Smith. Running three different models of car presents a few headaches for Plowman, who has hired staff from the disbanded Enduro Motorsport team and reshuffled his GT4 deck, with respected engineer Simon Pollock now overseeing the Artura.
“It’s been flat-out for the last four weeks getting the Merc programme sorted,” reveals Plowman, who has full confidence in Cowley. “There’s no doubts that he’s going to do a great job and that
just diverts pressure away from the team. If we can give him and Ed a car to win, then I’m sure they’ll get the job done.”
Academy boss Matt Nicoll-jones, who will share a second Mustang with Will Moore, says the new
Mustang is the culmination of “a lot of small changes in the right direction” that amounts to “quite a big change overall”. He reckons it has “a lot more scope for adjustment”, and praises the ergonomic improvements that make it “a lot more comfortable” for drivers. While admitting “we’ve got a long way to go with it yet”, he hopes that entering the same line-ups in the GT4 European series will accelerate the learning curve. “We’ve probably got the strongest pairings we’ve ever had,” Nicoll-jones adds. “I would hope that we should be there or thereabouts.”
With GT Winter champions Jamie Day and Mikey Porter seeking to continue their momentum in a Forsetti Motorsport Aston Martin, 2017 GT3 champion Seb Morris reuniting with the Team Parker squad to race a Mercedes alongside
GT Cup graduate Charles Dawson, and 2020 GT4 champion Dan Vaughan looking to rediscover winning ways in Speedworks’ Toyota Supra, there is no shortage of viable contenders among the 17-car field.