British GT preview
With Silver pairings banned, Mercedes pair Buurman and Loggie could be in the box seat after their Pro-am crown in 2020. But they face tough opposition
After a season-long duel between its two Lamborghinis and the two RAM Racing Mercedes in 2020, Barwell Motorsport finally broke the Italian marque’s British GT hoodoo by taking home the outright drivers’ and teams’ titles. But it wasn’t victorious on all fronts.
Honours in the Pro-am division went to Dan Shufflebottom’s Merc squad, and that takes on a bigger significance this year, with the Silver pairings that dominated last year now banned. Yelmer Buurman and Ian Loggie didn’t win a race outright last year,
but their Pro-am title-winning campaign had fewer troughs than that of Barwell rivals Phil Keen and Adam Balon, who were twice overall winners. Buurman and Loggie were helped somewhat when team-mate Sam De Haan hit Balon into a spin in the Silverstone finale, but that day also marked Loggie’s seasonal high point as he battled outright champion Rob Collard’s Barwell Lambo for the race lead en route to second.
Starting with this weekend’s 2021 opener at Brands Hatch, Buurman and Loggie will hope to parlay that Pro-am crown into outright success, but they face familiar opposition seeking to stop them in the shape of three strong Lamborghinis from Barwell and WPI Motorsport.
Familiar, yes, but also slightly different. After six years under the Barwell awning, series standout Keen has joined Michael Igoe’s ambitious single-car WPI squad, which also welcomes ex-barwell engineer Andy Richardson to the fold. That cements the credentials of a team that only made its British GT debut in 2019 with a Carrera Cup Porsche. Over at Barwell, meanwhile, Balon is now partnered by Collard’s 2020 co-champion Sandy Mitchell.
The 21-year-old Mitchell has been promoted to full Lamborghini factory status after his 2020 successes, which included winning the Silver class at the
Spa 24 Hours. He keeps his engineer from last year, Matt Beers, but in Balon has a very different challenge to that posed by working with Collard. While the tin-top veteran was totally new to GT racing, he needed little advice when it came to racecraft. On the other hand, Balon has two years of Huracan experience under his belt, but finished last year low on confidence, which Barwell’s pre-season test programme set out to address.
Team boss Mark Lemmer admits that Barwell “didn’t get the best out of Adam at the end of last year”, but reckons his new partnership with Mitchell is already showing potential. “The set-up we ended up with for Adam and Keeny made it a difficult car for Adam to drive, but luckily what he and Sandy want from the car is more aligned and he’s got a car he feels he can really attack with,” says Lemmer.
“He’s in such a different place. Adam was really keen to get back to Silverstone and he went 1.5s per lap faster than in quali at the end of last year. The combination is really working and I have no doubt they’ll be in the mix from the word go.”
The second car will be occupied by Barwell stalwart Leo Machitski, returning for a first full season in British GT since his 2006 title year alongside rapid Dane Dennis Lind, who shone in a part-season with WPI in 2019. Machitski, after winning 2018 and
“The combination is really working and I have no doubt that they’ll be in the mix from the word go”
2019 GT World Challenge Europe Am class titles, had his desire to have another crack at the old-school UK tracks sparked by the continental series’ visit to Imola last year. He has EX-WRT man Charles Hodge in his camp on engineering duties and, according to Lemmer, confidence is not something that crew will lack.
“Leo is super-confident,” says Lemmer. “We know there’s a learning curve for him, but he’s a fast learner. When Dennis became available, we jumped on that and we’re very lucky to have two pairings that are going to challenge.”
With opportunities to test on the full Brands GP loop limited, both Barwell cars were among the smattering of British GT entrants on the grid for the GT Cup race there earlier this month. Lemmer says the outing “really achieved the objectives” of building confidence and familiarity.
WPI also contested that event, and Igoe, despite being stranded in the pits for race one due to “some freak things”, heads into the new season on a high. “We’re glad for [the technical issues] to happen there and hopefully now those problems are out of the way,” he says. “We’ve worked hard, and Phil has fitted in really well. He’s a big asset to the team and we’ve learned lots, so we’re moving forward at quite a rate of knots.”
After learning the ropes in 2019, Igoe emerged as a race winner at Donington last year alongside Andrea Caldarelli, but he found the revolving door of Lambo factory drivers alongside him (four in total) didn’t help with continuity. “There was no two weekends we had the same driver,” he says.
Igoe admits that Keen’s presence in the team brings pressure – “When you’re comparing yourself to him, you’re comparing yourself to the best” – but with a winter of testing under his belt is optimistic “it’s going in the right direction”.
“WPI Motorsport is a very new team, especially at this level against teams that have been around the championship for years,” says Igoe. “So for us to come as a small team and to get everybody going in the right direction without missing anything along the way is quite a big ask, but we are definitely getting there.”
Lemmer, who has run the Huracan since 2016, points out that the Lambo is “a cost-effective package” and benefits from “a brilliant level of support, especially for some of these new teams coming in”.
But while Lamborghini has numerical superiority – a fourth car from Simon
Green Motorsport is entered in the fledgling Silver-am sub-class – that doesn’t mean it will translate onto the track, where the less aero-dependent Mercedes has often proven the most Am-friendly package.
As for RAM, a second car will be entered at selected events starting at Brands this weekend, with De Haan joined by Bronzegraded historics racer James Cottingham. At races where the team is only running one car, more focus will inevitably be drawn onto Buurman and Loggie –
“I think it’s probably a positive thing for them,” concedes Shufflebottom – who retain the services of Portugalbased engineering whizz Alex Zochling.
With the overall title now at stake, Shufflebottom reckons it will make a “huge difference” to RAM’S drivers, but also ups the incentive for all parties to deliver. “We want to win it, Ian wants to win it, Yelmer wants to win it, so this is what we’ve got to focus on,” says Shufflebottom. “Ian has been doing British GT for quite a long time, he knows what needs to be done to win, and when you can’t win races you’ve got to make sure you score points. Yelmer is the same – he’s got so much experience and in qualifying is always able to turn it on and get a lap. Together they should be pretty strong.”
Throw into the mix a return of the Jonny Adam-andrew Howard axis that yielded titles in 2013 and 2015 at Beechdean AMR, the race-winning JRM Bentley back after a year’s hiatus, and the first full-time Porsche entry since 2014 with 2017 title-winner Team Parker Racing, and there’s every reason to expect 2021 to be a thriller.