MCLAREN, BMW SHARE THE SPOILS
Both GT4 battles were stories of triumph against adversity, as Mclaren and BMW shared the wins.
It’s been a long wait for a British GT victory for Joe Osborne. Having been stripped of a GT3 win here back in 2016 for what was deemed as ‘avoidable contact’ with Phil Keen, and then being robbed of a comfortable lead by a safety car last year, Osborne and teammate David Pattison’s luck finally turned in Norfolk as they hit the top step of the podium in race one.
The fleet of Mclarens weren’t the fastest thing around the 300 circuit, mostly due to the cars carrying an extra 115kg of lead at this track – something that made finding the optimal window for switching the tyres on and not overcooking them in the warm conditions tricky to find.
Instead it was BMW and Aston Martin to the fore initially. Century Motorsport’s M4 GT4S were seriously quick, with Ben Tuck snatching pole for race one and then opening out a comfortable lead. That is before the race was turned on its head by a safety car, called when Graham Johnson’s Mclaren ground to a halt on the infield with an electrical issue.
The caution came just before the pit window, meaning almost the entire field opted to pile into the pits at the first opportunity.
Not only did the safety car rob Tuck of his five-second lead, but it also spelled the end of the challenge for all of the leaders, who were all silverrated crews. That grading means the cars must serve an extra 12 seconds in their pitstops.
Suddenly the race order of Tuck, Will Moore’s Aston, Callum Pointon’s Ginetta and Michael O’brien’s faststarting Mclaren was disrupted. When they all rejoined, the best placed was O’brien’s car, which was back in fourth with Charlie Fagg now aboard.
With shorter stops, the Pro-am pairings leapt up the order, Osborne rejoined in second having taken the car over from Pattison down in 10th. Osborne hunted down Matt George’s Jaguar F-type SVR for the lead, shortly before the interloping Jag was pinged for cutting its pit time short.
Once clear, Osborne made no mistake and won by a clear margin. “Looks like it’s third time lucky!” he said. “It’s been ages since my last win – back in a GT3 Porsche in 2012, and that was here too! The safety car made that for us. Hopefully I won’t have to wait another six years for similar luck here!”
Behind Osborne a thriller played out for second. Fagg worked his way up, but had Matt Nicoll-jones (in for Moore) and Scott Malvern’s Mercedes filling his mirrors for the final laps as he fell just shy of a first outright podium alongside Nick Jones.
After losing out in race one, Century’s Ben Green/tuck almost lost their shot at victory in race two as well, when Green was tipped out of the top four by contact from Dan Mckay’s Mclaren.
“I just saw the barrier coming towards me and thought, right we’re f***ed!” said Green, who somehow managed to keep it out of the Armco. Green got going again and set up a stunning comeback drive that would end with the pair taking their first victory.
Green fought back to 10th in the tightly bunched pack, and Century timed its earlier stop perfectly to get Tuck installed and back out in fourth place.
From then on, Tuck was on a charge, picking off his rivals until he slipped past the Mclaren of Lewis Proctor/jordan Albert into Nelson on the final lap.
“We’ve always had this pace, but we’ve only just been able to show it in the dry, and the team called our stop perfectly – but I still have no idea how we won that!” said Tuck.
Nicoll-jones/moore finished third, having battled gamely against a broken downshift paddle from lap two, which meant the crew had to improvise by flicking the car into automatic to get it to change gear.
Graham Johnson/mike Robinson won the Pro-am class after curing a broken gearbox sensor.