National reports: Spa; Oulton Park; Donington Park; Cadwell Park; Bouley Bay and Val des Terres
SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS BRITISH GT JULY 21-22
Graham Davidson grew accustomed to winning in a dominant GT Cup campaign last year, but has found success rather harder to come by since stepping up to British GT. After losing out on victories at Rockingham to a track-limits penalty and at Snetterton to a sluggish pitstop, the Scot admitted putting himself under too much pressure to get the monkey off his back, which resulted in costly on-track incidents in the second Snetterton race and again at the Silverstone 500.
So it was apt that having decided on a more relaxed approach and keeping a calm head, Davidson should break his British GT duck at Spa on a day when everybody around him was losing theirs.
Despite running 45kg more than last year, qualifying suggested this was Aston Martin’s weekend to lose, but on lap eight of the race few would have singled out the Jetstream Motorsport Vantage Davidson shared with 2016 Spa 24 Hours victor Maxime Martin as a potential winner. Beaten only by the Optimum Motorsport Aston of Jonny Adam/flick Haigh in qualifying, Davidson had slipped to fifth behind the guesting RAM Mercedes-amg GT3 of Remon Vos, Ian Loggie’s Team Parker
Racing Bentley Continental GT3 and Jordan Witt in the RJN Nissan GT-R GT3 after forgetting to close the vents to the cockpit and getting grit kicked up by Haigh on quick-dry cement at Eau Rouge in his eyes.
“Sure enough, I had a word with myself,” Davidson said later.
But in scenes reminiscent of the 1982 Monaco Grand Prix, within a lap he had taken the lead as the cars ahead fell by the wayside. First, Witt rotated Loggie at the Bus Stop, earning the Nissan man a 20-second stop/go penalty. Next, Vos came in to serve a 60s stop/go penalty for squeezing Mark Farmer’s TF Sport Aston Martin into the wall – and retirement – on the run to Eau Rouge on the first lap. With the sump torn off, Farmer’s car continued ablaze up the hill before he could safely pull off and left a trail of oil that required a 20-minute safety-car intervention to clear up.
And the drama wasn’t over, as the Optimum Aston of Haigh then spun at
Les Combes and lost almost a minute trying to rejoin against oncoming traffic.
“It was a casing that came off the rear wheelarch,” said a deflated Haigh, who charged back up to seventh before handing over to Adam. “It must have come loose in the compression through Eau Rouge and then, as I turned in, I heard this massive bang. It went underneath the car, spun me round and there was nothing I could do.”
That left Davidson in front from Rick Parfitt Jr’s Team Parker Racing Bentley, with the ERC Sport Mercedes of Lee
Mowle a further 40s behind in third.
But Davidson’s hopes of a straightforward win were thwarted with the arrival of another safety car shortly after halfway when the Team ABBA Racing Mercedes, which Richard Neary had pitted from fourth, suddenly caught fire with Adam Christodoulou at the wheel.
After five laps behind the safety car – Martin had so much pick-up on his tyres that he was convinced he had a puncture – the race returned to green, with Mowle’s co-driver Yelmer Buurman quickly on the tail of Ryan Ratcliffe, back in the
Team Parker Bentley after a bout of food poisoning forced him to sit out Silverstone.
As Martin pulled clear towards his first victory as an AMR factory driver, Ratcliffe put up a stern defence when Buurman tried to pass into Eau Rouge and had to
lift off the throttle, allowing both Marco Sorensen (in the TF Sport Aston started by Derek Johnston) and Adam to slip past on the Kemmel Straight.
Catching a gaggle of GT4 cars as they approached the Bus Stop on the final lap threatened to undo all of his hard work, but Ratcliffe held off Sorensen by 0.096s for second in what he billed “the best race of my life”. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy when I saw that chequered flag,” said the Welshman. “As soon as I crossed the line I burst into tears.”
After the race, Sorensen/johnston were docked 30s and bumped down to seventh for earlier contact with Jon Minshaw’s Barwell Lamborghini Huracan GT3, which had also survived being turned around at La Source by the sister car of Sam de Haan.
It was a bitter double-whammy for TF Sport, as that penalty promoted Farmer and co-driver Nicki Thiim’s championship rivals Adam/haigh to an unlikely podium ahead of Buurman/mowle – who now sit just half a point behind the pre-event leaders in fourth – and Phil Keen/minshaw, who changed the set-up completely overnight and fought back from 13th to claim the championship lead with fifth.
All of that was of little consequence to a relieved Davidson. As for Martin, he would be more than happy for British GT to visit his homeland every week…