BRITISH GT GETS READY TO RUMBLE
We look ahead to a homegrown sportscar season
Both British GT’s GT3 and GT4 contests look very different from last year, and all the more intriguing for it. Graham Keilloh looks at the runners and riders
The latest British GT championship, that gets underway this weekend at Brands Hatch, will look rather different. Last year the Silver Cup – wherein two Silver-graded drivers paired – accounted for three of the first four in the frontrunning GT3 standings. Faced with this, the championship sought to return to its Pro-Am roots – and retain its Bronze-graded amateurs who tend to sign the cheques. Silver Cup in GT3 is therefore replaced with Silver-Am. ProAm duos should rule again.
The most obvious risk, that entries take a hit, hasn’t at the aggregate level come to pass. For Brands there are 14 GT3 entries, up on the 13 that entered 2020’s season-opener. And whatever is the case with quantity, 2021’s title battle looks one of quality.
Reigning champion driver Sandy Mitchell of reigning champion team Barwell Motorsport thinks so. “The championship’s going to be really tight this year because of the nature of Pro-Am, there’s a lot of competitive pairings,” he tells Motorsport News.
The 21-year-old was a revelation in British GT last season, driving a Lamborghini Huracan in a Silver Cup pairing with Rob Collard. Now Mitchell leads a Pro-Am pair, with former teammate Phil Keen’s erstwhile co-driver Adam Balon.
“We’re feeling confident that we’ll be right up the front and challenging for the wins at each round,” Mitchell continues. “We’ve done a good amount of testing.
It’s gone well and we’re comfortable with the car and working with each other.
“It’s great to step up to a Pro-Am role. I’m looking forward to not having the Silver ballast weight that I had in the car last year, so it’ll be no excuses!”
A second Barwell Huracan will be driven by the returning Leo Machitski, who won Barwell’s first British GT title in 2006, alongside Dennis Lind.
Which leads us to another way that British GT will look different in 2021.
The formidable Keen has departed Barwell after six years. He’ll still drive a Huracan, but now with WPI Motorsport alongside Michael Igoe.
Keen’s status as British GT’s standard bearer remains beyond most dispute – he bagged seven fastest laps from nine last year. Igoe in team boss Alyn Roberts’ words has “come on massively” in the last 12 months. They could well be favourites.
“There’s only one aim and that’s to win!,” Igoe tells MN. “There’s a lot of hard work gone in behind the scenes and there’s only one destination.
“We’ve done quite a bit of winter testing. There’s a few new things for the team this year with a new engineer, Phil joining, there’s been quite a few in-house changes but it’s been good to have the consistency of the one driver [Keen] for the testing programme.”
Yelmer Buurman and Ian Loggie in their RAM Racing Mercedes also look strong. RAM last year ran Barwell the closest in the drivers’ and teams’ standings while Buurman and Loggie took GT3’s Pro-Am title.
“They did a great job [last year], we missed out on a few good results,” team boss Dan Shufflebottom tells MN. “It was never meant to be a foundation year but having done that together they’ve got a really sold understanding of each other and what each other requires to get the most out of the weekend. They’re going to be very strong from the outset.
“Looking at the entries so far there’s probably only four cars right at the front and Ian and Yelmer are definitely one of them. Ian is generally very very good; he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. When he really gets it together he is hard to beat.”
Anyone with designs on the title will though have to beat the legendary duo Andrew Howard and four-time titlewinner Jonny Adam. They’re together for a full-season assault in a Beechdean AMR Aston Martin for the first time since 2015. And their aims are, aptly, high.
“I’d love to aim for a fifth championship,” Adam tells MN. “We [Adam and Howard] had a one-off race last year at Brands, we had good pace but definitely from there on in there was talk about this year and trying to get the band back together!
“We’ve done four or five days testing and it’s gone really well, made steps with
“Moving to Pro-Am there will be no excuses!” Sandy Mitchell
the car and with Andrew. We’re starting off quite confident.”
Team Parker Racing’s 2018 GT4 Pro-Am champions Scott Malvern and Nick Jones, after struggling with the Bentley last year, switch to a more known quantity in the Porsche 911.
“I’m confident that we’ve got the right bit of kit this time,” Malvern tells MN. “We’re made up with the car. We’re only just scratching the surface with the potential, the car is already very good [and] every time we go on track we seem to unlock something else. So if that trend continues I’m going to be pretty happy by the time we get halfway through this season!”
The famous 2019 GT4 Pro-Am champion duo Kelvin Fletcher and Martin Plowman make their GT3 debuts with JRM Racing, after a Covid-related year’s delay. And they’re doing so with a
Bentley. “The amount of people that have told me to stay away from the Bentley,” Fletcher admits to MN.
“But it looks fantastic, it sounds fantastic, it looks so different but commercially that’s what sells.
“And I like to do things a little bit differently and between Martin, JRM, the engineers, hopefully the SRO will give us a good fair BoP, I’m confident we can be very very competitive.”
Enduro Motorsport with Morgan Tillbrook and Marcus Clutton driving have acquired Balfe Motorsport’s British GT race-winning McLaren 720S and therefore converted its planned race-byrace appearances into a full-season effort.
There are also a trio of full-season entries in the new Silver-Am class, and all look intriguing. For starters, father-and-son Richard and Sam Neary in their Team Abba Mercedes have been rapid in 2021’s GT Cup so far.
They’re joined by another dad-and-lad pair Stewart and Lewis Proctor who’ll race a Balfe McLaren. Lewis showed promise in an Optimum McLaren last year, including bagging pole in Oulton’s round one. And there’s the Simon Green Motorsport Lamborghini with an all champion line-up: Lucky Khera – fresh from dominating 2020’s Ferrari Challenge – alongside 2014 GT4 champion Ross Wylie.
Another Silver-Am pair, Matt Manderson and Mike Brown in Ultimate Speed’s Aston Martin, will contest the Brands curtain-raiser plus in three more events, while Am-Am duo Shamus Jennings and Greg Caton are set for a part campaign in a G-Cat Racing Porsche 911.