OULTON PARK STORMER
The 2022 British GT4 Championship gets underway in mixed conditions over the Easter weekend
It’s been three years since the traditional season opening on Easter Monday at Oulton Park for the British GT Championship. A 31-car entry consisting of 18 GT3 and 13 GT4 cars assembled for two hour-long sprint races on Bank Holiday Monday.
Academy Motorsport was back with the Mustang GT4 to complete some unfinished business, having finished second overall in 2021. Matt Cowley has multiple Mustang wins in the championship and was joined by Canadian Marco Signoretti (no stranger to the GT4 Mustang, having won the 2021 Sports Car Championship Canada in a similar car) as the second driver.
The pair instantly gelled, with their similar driving styles and preferred car setup. Among the changes for the 2022 season, Pirelli introduced an all-new GT racing tyre. The teams confirmed that the dry tyre’s grip and race distance degradation were both notably improved.
The racing Mustang has previously been counter-intuitively gentle on tyres, so the benefit of the new compounds would favour others more. The new tyre saw lap records tumble during qualifying.
Cowley and Signoretti qualified symmetrically in P9 in their respective qualifying sessions and within a quarter-ofa-second of each other, thereby confirming the limited benefit that an already-wellconfigured Mustang was able to gain from the new tyre compound.
Coupled to revised balance of performance variables (which now favoured the Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Ginetta, McLaren, Porsche and Toyota runners), the Academy Motorsport crew were going to have their work cut out.
In the first race Signoretti made an incredible start, taking the Mustang from ninth to fourth on the opening lap. He held position before handing over to Matt Cowley for a remarkable display of consistency.
Cowley held the same position in the same way that Signoretti had but neither were able to put a move on the third-place Cayman.
After the race, Signoretti attributed his opening lap storm through the pack to his precision driving experience on crowded kart tracks rather than any time learning Oulton Park circuit on a simulator.
Academy’s ever-concise crew chief Andrew Dean summarised the first race outcome: “Cracking start, exceptional pit stop, good result, good points.”
The championship rewards podium positions with pit stop time penalty additions in the subsequent race, so the good news going into the second race was no success penalty for the Mustang.
Race two was to culminate in a 25-minute dash for victory after a mid-race downpour just as the pit stop window opened.
A subsequent stoppage to recover two stranded cars prevented either class from completing their pit stop cycles as intended.
Race control restarted the race with second drivers installed, tyres changed and cars in the order from one lap prior to the stoppage. That meant the success penalties from race one, and the Mustang’s Silver Cup mandatory pit stop, would incur an additional 14 seconds added to their times at the end of the race.
The racing that followed the stoppage was closely fought, but even after getting up to fourth from seventh place at the restart, there was little chance for Signoretti to overpower the looming 14 seconds pit stop time that would be added – plus a further time penalty for unintentional contact with the Porsche.
The Mustang finished the second race in ninth position after the post-race adjustments were done and dusted.
Even so, Academy came away with the drivers in the top half of the championship points table, which rewards consistent point scoring as well as individual podium finishes.
The British GT Championship now moves on to its showpiece race. The Silverstone 500 is a three-hour event, held on 7/8 May, when points-and-a-half will be awarded for the first time this year.