Team Parker seal Silverstone win
TEAM Parker Racing took class win and overall victory in the sixth round of the national GT championship at the Silverstone 500, writes Rupert Matthews.
The Desford-based team compete with their #31 and #7 Bentley Continental GT3 cars.
The British GT championship is a race series in which modern supercars take part in long distance racing around Britain’s best race tracks.
This time out it was the blue ribbon round of the championship at the home of British motorsport Silver- stone.
The race was three hours long around the track totalling 500 miles.
Rick Parfitt Jnr and Seb Morris drove the #31 with Callum MacLeod and Ian Loggie at the wheel of the #7.
The #31 car had previously won this season at Oulton park.
Parfitt and Morris put in a brilliant combined time in a frantic 10 minute qualifying session but was cruelly denied pole position by just 0.092 seconds by rivals Macmillan AMR Aston Martin team.
The #7 started fifth.
The 29-strong field, made up of ten different manufacturers, got underway from a rolling start surprisingly un-scathed.
The two cars managed to hold their places but, #31 led off the line and quickly took the lead in first half hour.
Parfitt had an incident with the #11 TF Aston Martin at Stowe corner, causing the Aston to spin.
Both cars were able to regain control.
In the half race distance the safety car was brought out because of Team Parker Racing’s other entrant #7.
The car came off-track at the high speed copse corner ploughing into the tire wall.
Luckily driver Callum MacLeod was uninjured.
Seb took over driving duties with one-and-a-half hours to go and continued driving like the Bentley was on rails.
Team Parker Racing garage and Parfitt Jnr watched on nervously in the closing stages.
Seb brought their car over the line in first place with a massive lead of one minute over the second placed #24 Aston
Martin and #21 Ferrari came in third.
Seb later said “We’re both feeling pretty emotional.
“It’s been unbelievable, we’ve had an amazing strategy today, just doing our own thing pulling away from the pack”.