Let the games begin!

Under completely contrasting skies of last year's near wash-out, the British GT Championship's class of 2019 set about their final preparations on Friday and Saturday ahead of the two opening rounds of the season from the Oulton Park circuit in Cheshire tomorrow.

Eleven examples of the finest new Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3's and GT4's will race competitively for the first time in the UK amongst the expected grid of thirty five cars with the established AMR teams of TF Sport, Optimum Motorsport, Beechdean AMR and Academy Motorsport amongst them.


Many of the drivers within the seven AMR GT4 entries will have relatively little GT racing experience going into this season and all bar three of them have embarked on this path as part of their racing driving developmental curve and in partnership with the Aston Martin Racing Driver Academy process. The same will apply for the youngest driver within the AMR fleet with Optimum's Ollie Wilkinson also included.



Whilst other business sadly kept us away from the excitement of yesterdays Free Practice and Qualifying for each of tomorrows two-one hour races, all looks set to be an exciting opening encounter around the 2.7mile Cheshire circuit and if you are not lucky enough to be there tomorrow, then fear not as both races will be streamed live via the British GT social media channels.


Race 1 begins at 11:15hrs with the AMR cars placed as follows on the Am starting grid:-

GT3

P8   #2 TF Sport Mark Farmer
P10 #47 TF Sport Graham Davidson
P12 #96 Optimum Ollie Wilkinson
P13 #99 Beechdean Andrew Howard

GT4

P5 #95 TF Sport Patrick Kibble
P8 #62 Academy Alex Toth Jones
P10 #11 Beechdean Kelvin Fletcher
P11 #35 Optimum Connor O'Brien
P13 #61 Academy Ben Hurst
P14 #97 TF Sport Josh Hands
P18 #75 Optimum Patrik Mathiessen

Race 2 begins at 15:35hrs with the AMR cars placed as follows on the Pro starting grid:-

GT3

P6  #2 TF Sport Nicki Thiim
P7  #99 Beechdean Marco Sorensen
P10 #47 TF Sport Jonny Adam
P11 #96 Optimum Bradley Ellis

GT4

P4  #11 Beechdean Martin Plowman
P5. #97 TF Sport Tom Canning
P12 #95 TF Sport Josh Price
P15 #62 Academy Will Moore
P16 #61 Academy Micah Stanley
P18 #75 Optimum Mike Robinson
P20 #35 Optimum Jack Butel

Obviously we wish all competing a safe and fruitful race and season ahead - Game on!!

Photo credits - Steve Jackman / Jacob Ebrey (title image)