Back on the ground at British GT again but still a bit rusty!!

Saturday, June 26, 2021

A significant day for us and seemingly many of our media colleagues today as we ‘went back to school’ and attended our first British GT Championship event of the year and for most, the first motorsport event for a very long time!

Whilst it was obviously good to be back trackside again, there are still remnants of social distancing and bio security measures still being applied at Silverstone this weekend with fans being restricted to the National Pit Straight only and media not permitted within the garages or indeed on tomorrows grid for example which for all are something of a pain.

Anyway, for the four Aston Martin Racing cars participating in this weekends tenth anniversary event of the Silverstone 500, their biggest problem was changing setup after last night’s torrential rain effectively created another ‘green’ track for them in today’s first Free Practice session after yesterday’s warmth in private testing.

Two one-hour Free Practice sessions were available to all thirty-one cars today ahead of this afternoon’s Qualifying with both guesting TF Sport GT3 cars at the top of the timing screen having clocked times suitable to claim P2 and P3 for the #38 and #95 cars respectively whilst the #7 Beechdean AMR was slightly lower down in P9. The sole AMR GT4 from the Newbridge Motorsport team claimed top spot in their Pro-Am class with drivers Matt Topham and Darren Turner in their #27 car.

Then during a red flag interrupted Free Practice 2 session, the gaps between the Astons spread out slightly with the #95 Marco Sorensen/Bonamy Grimes car leading the marque in P4, Giacomo Petrobelli/Charlie Eastwood #38 in P7, the #7 Beechdean of Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam P11 with the #27 Newbridge car having to settle for P2 in class that time around.

That presented things nicely ahead of this afternoons Pro and Am Qualifying sessions that saw the GT3 Am’s out first followed by their Pro’s and again in GT4 after that.

Aggregated times initially placed the #38 TF Sport car in P2 but a later post session penalty for a track violation saw that moved back down to P4 for tomorrows start. The #7 Beechdean crew finished in (what appeared to be in body language) a very disgruntled P7 after they were left tinkering with various parts of their car just ahead of Qualifying whilst the #95 ended up P13.

In GT4 meanwhile, the #27 Newbridge car lapped aggregated times that would place the latest full season AMR recruits to the Championship in P4 overall but still P2 in their class.