Mitchell/balon take the spoils after race-long GT3 battle
SILVERSTONE BRITISH GT 7-8 MAY
Half a second was all that split the winning Barwell Lamborghini from the pursuing Garage 59 Mclaren after three hours of flat-out racing at Silverstone that ran uninterrupted for the duration.
As Sandy Mitchell and Adam Balon banished the memories of a tricky British GT season opener at Oulton Park, the pair needed an inch-perfect drive to beat a guesting Marvin Kirchhofer and Alexander West in a race determined by fine margins.
“If we’d lost one or two seconds throughout the whole race then [the win] probably wouldn’t have happened,” said Mitchell, who breathed a sigh of relief when Kirchhofer resumed the race after his third and final stop on lap 68 narrowly behind. Mitchell admitted that he likely wouldn’t have passed Kirchhofer, on four-lap fresher rubber, had he rejoined ahead for the final 35-minute dash. The pair proved so evenly matched that they set identical times on the penultimate tour.
“The Mclaren’s straightline speed is pretty strong compared to us as well, so I think it would have been extremely difficult to overtake,” explained the 2020 champion. “I had to defend two or three times, but thankfully he never got side-by-side.”
Mitchell’s stunning qualifying effort, 0.693 seconds faster than anybody in the Pro session, allied with a strong fourth place for Balon, had secured them pole.
But Balon soon had fastest Am qualifier Alex Malykhin (Redline Lamborghini) looming large in his mirrors, and the lunge came as they went into Club on lap three. Contact was made and Malykhin was issued a drivethrough penalty, limiting him and James Dorlin to an eventual fourth.
West had started 10th, but ended the first lap third after “one of the luckier starts I’ve seen”. After being rebuffed by Malykhin for second into Becketts, James Cottingham was challenged into Stowe by Richard Neary. The pair ran side-by-side into Club, where the Abba Mercedes went deep into the left-hander, allowing Cottingham to get back alongside entering the right. Neary then clouted Cottingham into a spin, causing race-ending damage to the rightrear corner on the 2 Seas Mercedes, which was then clipped by Ian Loggie’s RAM Racing example.
“The wishbone was so bent they couldn’t get to some of the fixings properly,” explained team boss Dan Shufflebottom of the lengthy repair that left Loggie and Callum Macleod to finish a distant 15th in GT3 with steering still askew.
Neary continued, fighting back from the tail end of the pack to finish fifth on the road, before being excluded when a door was removed under parc ferme conditions. Kevin Tse (Sky Tempesta) had inherited third, then spun at the Loop, completing a terrible opening lap for Mercedes.
Once Malykhin had served his penalty, Balon returned to the lead but soon had his mirrors full of a flying Morgan Tillbrook, who had started 13th in the Enduro Mclaren he shared with Marcus Clutton. Up to seventh on lap one, he’d passed Mark Sansom (Assetto Bentley), Shaun Balfe’s Audi, Nick Moss (Optimum Mclaren) and West, then ran longest of anybody
with a 66-minute opening stint that took him to lap 32, 11 further than Balon.
After a right-rear puncture for Adam Carroll (in for Balfe) had ended his pursuit of Mitchell and put the Oulton winner out, Clutton rejoined fifth as Mitchell led Kirchhofer, Sam Neary and Jamie Caroline (RAM). Another long stint from Clutton appeared to set the crew up for a podium, only for a fire extinguisher to go off in the cockpit as Tillbrook climbed aboard, which robbed the car of power.
Mitchell again pitted before Kirchhofer, and the German overturned a 5.7s deficit in his laps against Balon to give West an 11s lead. But Mitchell returned the favour against West, who was left to lament traffic “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. “But, after qualifying, if somebody had asked if I’d take second place, I would have done, no doubt,” he added.
Moss and Joe Osborne made it two guesting Mclarens on the podium. After Moss had matched Tillbrook’s marathon opening stint, Osborne rejoined 11th but brought the car back into contention over the next hour. A short second stint from Moss consolidated third spot.
Behind Dorlin, Jonny Adam chased Neary to the line and took fifth with Flick Haigh – another to run long early – on their first weekend in the 2 Seas Mercedes as a stop/go penalty for a short pitstop and a subsequent vibration dropped Caroline and John Ferguson out of contention, promoting Sansom and Will Tregurtha to sixth.
No success penalties were served, pending the appeal into the Oulton Park race-two result (see News). The Silverstone order therefore remains provisional and points have yet to be appointed.
But, whatever happens in the courts, Barwell’s win will be unaffected, and its championship challenge is back on track.
“A lot of the guys that did well at round one haven’t had such a good weekend,” said Mitchell. “Now the door’s wide open again.”