SILVERSTONE 500 ATTRACTS HUGE ENTRY
British GT set for bumper UK grid
A combined grid of 51 cars, one of the largest in British GT Championship history, is set to line up for this weekend’s marquee Silverstone 500 race.
The three-hour event on Silverstone’s Grand Prix Circuit will feature a 34-car British championship entry plus 17 cars from SRO’S European GT4 Series. The points-scoring British entry is one of the largest since the championship was formed, and falls just four short of the 38-strong field that raced at the same track in 2014.
The combined entry of 51 cars is also the second biggest ever, with the outright record being 66 cars at Spa-francorchamps in 2010 when sharing a grid with the domestic Belcar series.
New entries for the event include a third Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan for Mark Poole and Richard Abra, a second Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3 for Ian Loggie and Callum Macleod, an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 entry from MB Motorsport for Mike Brown and Jamie Wall and the British GT debut for the new Ferrari 488 in the hands of Marco Attard and Adam Carroll, as predicted by Motorsport News last week.
Blancpain racer Alexander Sims also returns to share Liam Griffin’s Barwell Huracan.
British GT manager Benjamin Franassovici said: “We’re ecstatic with the entry and I think it’s down to a combination of factors. Three-hour races are very popular and a track like Silverstone GP has international appeal, so it encourages one-off entries from outside the normal championship.
“GT4 European is part of the SRO family, and they run on the same tyres, so having them there will make this round like a festival of GT4. We expect over 50 cars again for the race at SpaFrancorchamps [in July].”
And Franassovici said there could be more three-hour races in future seasons.
“We’ll start looking at more three-hour races, but we’re limited by garage capacity, so essentially we have the choice of Silverstone and Donington. We’ll talk with teams and see if there’s the interest to maybe run two longer races next year.”