BENTLEY BLOWS THEM AWAY

HOW THE BRITISH GT TITLE WAS WON

What do you get when you cross a rock star with a parttime fashion model and add an iconic British brand into the mix? Sounds like a recipe for a Hello magazine shoot, but it’s the mixture that landed a historic British GT Championship title.

The rock star in question is Rick Parfitt Jr – son of the Status Quo legend, and frontman of his own band. The model, the one-time face of the Jack Wills fashion brand, and former GP3 Series racer Seb Morris. The car, M-sport’s Bentley Continental GT3. This year that trio proved to be the perfect combination and rammed home their credentials as being much more than just the aforementioned labels.

The fact is that Parfitt proved himself to be a rising star of sportscar racing this year. Morris has always had great potential – he’s a former Ginetta Junior champion – but various factors prevented him from starring on the international single-seater stage. A strong debut year in GTS last season set him up as one of the favourites to shine this year, and he did so with aplomb, securing his second British championship title.

The glue to bind the three winning components was Team Parker Racing. Stuart Parker’s crew excelled itself this year and rarely put a foot wrong to cement what will hopefully be a long and fruitful relationship with the Bentley brand.

However, although the mixture sounds glamorous, the title fight was anything but as Team Parker had to overcome an awful lot of obstacles, challenges and even heartbreak to secure what was in the end a very hard-earned title.

Parfitt in particular had multiple demons to battle this year. The loss of his father on Christmas Eve 2016 hit hard, and it was a recurring theme of the season that Parfitt would look to the skies and offer a wordless tribute following his, often stellar, performances. Something changed in Parfitt this year. He arrived with a gritty determination that was unwavering. The stress of his personal issues brought the added difficulty of multiple flare-ups of his debilitating Crohns Disease. He could often be found doubled over in pain in the garage pre-race before somehow strapping himself in for a stint.

“Sometimes I don’t know how I drove at all,” says Parfitt. “It seemed like everything was getting on top of me but I just had to focus and block it all out. My engineer even said to me at one point ‘you drive even better when you’re ill, keep it up!’ Although I’d rather have had an easier time in truth! Seb brought me on so much as a driver this year. We worked together more closely and he was simply ballistic all year.”

The fact Parfitt did drive, and performed as well as he did, can be put down to a real mental strength. His stints often removed a lot of the pressure during the second half of races, making Morris’s job look almost easy at times.

The Bentley’s strength lay in its consistency over the longer races. Parfitt and Morris won three of the four endurance rounds, banking the oneand-a-half times normal points they offered as the crux of their challenge.

Team Parker did a lot of work to improve the consistency of the Continental’s set-up. The car’s Achilles’ heel has always been traction. It has never powered out of slow corners particularly well against its rivals. Accepting this trait, the team worked to make the car better on its tyres and maximise its speed through the fast turns. Despite its bulky appearance, the Bentley has great aero through highgear corners, and its frontal engine weight also made it great on the brakes.

This year’s title battle ultimately favoured whoever could cope best with their weaknesses. Parfitt and Morris looked a long way off the title at the season-opener, when Barwell Motorsport’s regulars Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen looked solidly in control.

The Lamborghini Huracan pair won both races at Oulton Park, and then added a win in race one at Snetterton to make it three wins from the first four races and open a substantial lead in the points. But their hopes faded in the latter half of the season when the longer races came thick and fast.

Lamborghini’s parent firm Audi opted to change the front tyre size for the Huracan before the season – increasing from 660mm to 680mm – which threw out a lot of Barwell’s setup data. The team racked up the testing mileage to learn as much as it could about the new wheels, which had a knock-on effect of over-gripping the front and unsettling the rear.

Barwell found a balance, but the Huracan still wasn’t the easiest of cars for the amateurs to drive, with the more sensitive rear axle needing more precision and confidence. The car also wasn’t the kindest on its tyres, a combination of things that hindered Minshaw/keen in the longer races.

Minshaw drove excellently in the sprint events, but tended to struggle toward the end of the hour-long stints in longer rounds – being passed by Parfitt at Brands Hatch and then falling down the order, ultimately ceding the points lead in the penultimate round being the best example.

If the title had been decided on hourlong races alone, Minshaw and Keen would have been untouchable.

It was sad that another last-round mistake ended their title dreams when Minshaw suffered a costly spin early in the finale. From then on it was over to Parfitt/morris to keep their heads and bring the title back to Crewe for the first time ever with another podium finish.

This year’s fight boiled down to a twohorse race when the sister cars of both top teams hit trouble. The second Bentley of Ian Loggie and Callum Macleod suffered dire luck, with punctures at both Rockingham and Snetterton and a big crash at Silverstone. Macleod was often the fastest of all the Bentley drivers, and the pair’s win at Spa showed their potential, had they got more running.

The second Lambo of Sam Tordoff and Liam Griffin was a constant podium threat. Tordoff acquitted himself well in his first year of GT3 racing, and was never too far off the benchmarks that Keen laid down. With more experience he could be a star. Griffin ultimately suffered against a lack of seat time compared to Minshaw, who put in extra testing and appearances in other European classes to maximise his familiarity with the Huracan.

Aston Martin was reduced to a bitpart player in the title fight after an indifferent season for the TF Sport team. Last year’s champions Derek Johnston and Jonny Adam suffered a mid-season slump that cost them the title. A chassis fault was found just before Spa, traced back to Johnston

‘The Macmillan Aston was an interesting factor in GT3’

smashing a kerb at Rockingham. The damage led to their car suffering from inconsistent set-up and handling problems that varied from oversteer to understeer, depending on the car’s mood. They switched chassis for Spa and repaired the car fully for the final two races and won at Donington, sadly just in time to hand their crown over.

The second car of Mark Farmer and Jon Barnes showed flashes of pace, but the pair lost their way a bit mid-year when they diverged from the number 1 Aston’s set-up to try and find more pace. Once the two cars were aligned for Donington, TF dominated and showed what could have been.

The Macmillan AMR team was an interesting element, with its allSilver pairing of James Littlejohn and Jack Mitchell. The pair often starred in qualifying, but couldn’t quite overcome the extra weight and pitstop penalties their car carried to snatch a breakthrough win. Four podium finishes were a solid reward, and it was a shame they couldn’t contest the finale after the team was forced to withdraw citing “unforeseen circumstances”, skipping what was the Aston’s strongest circuit of the year.

With teams reporting stronger interest in GT3 for next year, Britain’s top sportscar class appears to have more longevity than the scaremongers of this time last year ever gave it.