Century denies Mclaren
SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS GT4 JULY 21-22
With a 20-second success penalty carried over from his victory at the Silverstone 500 last time out, you would have put long odds on Century Motorsport’s Jack Mitchell doubling up at Spa, a circuit that heavily favours the Mclaren 570S. Yet that’s exactly what he and new team-mate Dean Macdonald did, albeit with a large slice of luck courtesy of the safety car.
Mclarens locked out the top three places in qualifying, with the polesitting Tolman Motorsport car of Michael O’brien/charlie
Fagg a full 2.8s clear of the best of the rest, the Century BMW M4 of Snetterton winners Ben Green/
Ben Tuck. Fagg was one of three drivers to dip into the 2m31s bracket, while the best a BMW could manage was a 2m33.1s.
The status quo continued in the race, as O’brien led the similar Equipe Verschuur model driven by Finlay Hutchison (doing double duty with the GT4 European series), while Green and Lewis Proctor in another Tolman Mclaren gave chase.
At this stage, Macdonald was a lowly seventh in the queue, bottled up behind the leading Pro-am Mclaren of Graham Johnson. His pace on the straights was just enough to keep the championship-leading HHC Ginetta of Callum Pointon at bay, until Pointon made a botched move at Les Combes that would earn him a 60s stop/go penalty.
The leading quartet pitted together on lap 20, although
Proctor’s car did not resume after it caught fire during the handover to Jordan Albert.
Macdonald was over 30s behind the leaders before the driver changes but, when he came in for his own stop two laps later, the arrival of the safety car – for the burning
GT3 ABBA Mercedes – negated the 20s penalty and allowed the BMW to leapfrog Fagg and Dan Mckay (in for Hutchison).
Mitchell had to soak up the pressure for the remainder of the race, but covered every move on his way to victory by 0.387s from O’brien/fagg and Hutchison/mckay. “Because our sister car had track position, we were going to pit second, but it all played into our hands when the safety car came out,” said Mitchell, who now leads the GT4 standings by 16.5 points.
“I knew I was going to have a fight on my hands with Charlie behind me. He’s been quick all weekend but I managed to get the car in the right position; I just knew where they were going to be stronger.”
For his part, Fagg was “gutted” to see the BMW emerge from the pits ahead, which leaves him still waiting for his first win of the season.
“It’s just such a shame. It was clear we were going to go well at this track because of the long straights and the nature of the Mclaren having good straightline speed,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I feel robbed, I just feel like we deserved that. It’s good championship points and good to bounce back from Silverstone.”
Behind them, Scott Malvern’s Team Parker Mercedes-amg, shared with Nick Jones, was the only other car on the lead lap in fifth and took Pro-am honours after Johnson’s retirement.