British GTS get ready to rumble
We look ahead to the GT showdown for the 2020 season
To just about all of us, March – prelockdown with racing seasons apparently about to get underway – seems like a very long time ago. And, inevitably, much looks different between then and now as 2020’s British GT championship is set to at last start this weekend at Oulton Park. As in something that’s grown familiar, Covid-19’s impact on motorsport participation has been felt. In March a capacity 35-car British GT entry, with 19 GT3 cars, was announced gleefully. Now there are 22 full-season entries, 13 for GT3.
The change in the runners and riders has, if anything, made it even harder to pick a winner, in a competition that tends to be close at the best of times. Last year in GT3 indeed no fewer than four entrants finished the year within nine points of the table top.
Adding to the potential for uncertainty this time, the season also is condensed, with six rounds and nine races in just over three months and indeed half the season will be done by August’s end. Turnarounds will be tight and some expect more wet races too with the late-year itinerary.
The Silver Cup – for pairs of silvergraded drivers – looks particularly intriguing with a significant increase in numbers to five full-season GT3 entries currently confirmed and more perhaps on the way.
As noted, much looks different. And it starts at the top. Powerhouse TF Sport won’t be competing for this year’s GT3 title, due to Covid’s myriad implications, which in turn means reigning champion Jonny Adam won’t yet be able to chase his own title number five. While Beechdean AMR’S downgrade to a single-car effort at selected rounds means that, in something long unthinkable: there will be no Aston Martin Vantages competing for this year’s GT3 championship.
There is a clear sense, though, of which is the car to have. “Mclaren have really got everything together at the moment,” Sam De Haan notes to Motorsport News. “Last year it was just blisteringly fast, at Donington especially at the last round on the speed traps it was just way up on us.”
The consensus view was that Balfe Motorsport’s Shaun Balfe and Rob Bell were well set, as they finished a close third in last year’s drivers’standings and uniquely had a year’s experience of the Mclaren 720S in advance of 2020. Chris Needell of Barwell Motorsport for one told Motorsport News that Balfe was “pre-season favourite”.
But then that changed too, as Balfe also slimmed down its effort. Instead Stewart Proctor and Joe Osborne will race a 720S for the team in five of the nine races.
There remain four GT3 Mclarens to think about competing in the full season however. An opposite effect of the Covidrelated churn is that some intending GT World Challenge Europe efforts have been tempted into the British domestic championship. This applies to Jenson Team Rocket RJN (yes, that’s the 2009 Formula 1 champion who is a partner in the team) which has entered the Silver
Cup with GT4 graduate Michael O’brien and World’s Fastest Gamer James Baldwin.
Reigning Silver Cup champion
Ollie Wilkinson, juggling a GTWCE campaign, is back to defend his crown this year in a Mclaren with Optimum Motorsport, co-driving with fellow Mclaren Academy driver Lewis Proctor. Wilkinson with Bradley Ellis and Optimum also won a race outright last year and remained in overall title contention until the final round. There also is a new two-mclaren effort from the 2 Seas Motorsport team.
De Haan in a Barwell Lamborghini, with Jonny Cocker, was 2019’s overall GT3 champion for about an hour, before a postrace penalty for another car in the final round tilted the title to Adam, Graham
Davidson and TF. And De Haan has managed to surpass just about everyone in the extent of his changes for 2020. He was changing his driver grade, now Silver rather than Bronze, and surmised it was a good time to change car too. He’s now in a Mercedes, a new one naturally, for RAM Racing.
And RAM’S team principal Dan Shufflebottom is bullish about his squad’s championship chances. In a two-car effort he has Ian Loggie paired with returning Mercedes factory driver Yelmer Buurman in Pro-am, as well as De Haan teamed up with Finnish ex-gp3 driver Patrick Kujala in the Silver Cup. Loggie indeed, then paired with Callum Macleod, had his 2019 title chances hit by a shoulder injury. Shufflebottom tells MN: “If he’d [Loggie] just had some consistent finishes in the races we missed then we’d have been right in the championship hunt.
For Ian it’s unfinished business and Sam would like to clinch the overall title. So we definitely go in there with the aim of being the top two cars in the championship.”
The Mercedes is driver-friendly and kind to its tyres, though Shufflebottom reckons Balance of Performance could be its bugbear. He adds to MN: “I’m not sure we’ve got the most favourable BOP. We have to just hope the organisers do a good job of making sure that the balance is correct throughout the season.”
And by no means least, Phil Keen and Adam Balon are back with Barwell Motorsportin a Lamborghini Huracan. Despite it being Balon’s first year in GT3 last year, the pair looked on the way to the crown until late-season mishaps, and Keen is overdue a title. “Keeny we know is a bit of a British GT legend!,” Needell at the Barwell team says. “Adam’s now got a year of GT3 under his belt as well so he’s going to be a bit stronger.”
Barwell’s second pairing is worth watching too. Multiple British Touring Car Championship race winner Rob Collard makes his bow in British GT, and he’s paired with rising star Sandy Mitchell. “Maybe they’ll start quietly,” Needell concedes, “but they are going to be getting better and faster as a pairing as the season goes on.”
TF may not be competing in GT3, but it is fully in place to defend its GT4 drivers’ and teams’championships. Its champion drivers Tom Canning and Ash Hand have moved on but it still has two strong lineups for 2020.
Team boss Tom Ferrier explains to MN: “Patrick Kibble is known to us from last year, he’s improved a lot since, he’s been very very strong in testing. Connor O’brien knows the car from last year but is new to us, he’s done a good job, they’re in the 95 car. And then Dan Vaughan and Jamie Caroline are both new to us and new to GT racing, but they’ve done a strong test programme as well, so all looks very positive.”
Not that Ferrier is taking anything for granted. He adds: “I’m sure there’ll be some strong cars out there, there always is.” The Mustang for one was quick in Seb Priaulx’s hands last year for Multimatic; now Academy Motorsport has taken over with a fine-looking driver pairing of Matt Cowley and Jordan Albert.
There also are three GT4 Mclarens to consider. The GT4 2017 champion HHC Motorsport should remain in contention: its Jordan Collard and Patrick Matthiesen duo look formidable among the GT4 runners while its all-debutant second pair,
Chris Wesemael and Gus Bowers, has promise. Balfe Motorsport also has Euan Hankey and Mia Flewitt behind the wheel of a Mclaren.