British GT back to Spa Francorchamps and the start of Speed Week

Spa – one of our favourite racetracks anywhere in the world hosts the fourth round of the 2021 British GT Championship this coming weekend and that also marks the start of the SRO’s annual Speed Week from the circuit.

Two weeks since the last round of the Championship from Donington Park, a round that saw some extra-ordinary scenes as car after car faltered even before the race had even reached the second corner of its opening lap but ended with the # Beechdean AMR GT3 crew of Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam joint top of the GT3 Drivers Championship and second in Pro-Am.

Not so good at Donington for the Newbridge Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 team of Matt Topham and a guesting Darren Burke as a bizarre incident behind the Safety Car required after another first lap incident took out both their #27 car and three other GT4’s in one go even before the race had gone back to green.

A protest from the team was later submitted to the race stewards after the event lodging various allegations against other parties so we should hear of anything has come of those protests before official sessions begin at the Spa Francorchamps circuit later this week.

Beechdean and Newbridge remain the sole AMR representatives in this round which now hosts an expected attendance of twenty-two cars spread across the three available classes of GT3, GTC and GT4.

Thanks to their P3 finish at Donington, the #7 Beechdean crew will face the effects of an additional ten seconds in the pitlane during their pitstop at some point during Sunday’s two-hour race whilst the #27 Newbridge car competes again unimpeded by any of that as Darren Turner returns to the team after his brief absence from round three due to his other duties with the AMR factory.

Our thoughts obviously remain with those in Belgium and Germany recently affected by severe storms and flooding which attributed to an ever-increasing loss of life as well as severe structural damage to everything in the floods path – including the Spa racetrack again.

Free Practice and Qualifying is scheduled to take place on Saturday with the start of Sundays race being waved off at 12:30hrs local.

Photo credits – Jacob Ebrey / Teams