British GT all set for two sprint races tomorrow from Snetterton

That still left the pair of Blackthorn AMR Vantage GT3’s of both Giacomo Petrobelli/Jonny Adam within the #87 car and Matt Topham/Josh Rowledge aboard the #10 car as well as the two Forsetti Motorsport AMR Vantage GT4’s of both Mikey Porter/Jamie Day aboard the #7 and Marc Warren/Will Orton aboard the #47 car.

Testing again on Friday in dry but windy conditions saw continuation of the performances found by all four cars at the previous round at Spa Francorchamps (even though the #87 car suffered technical failure) to post best lap times towards the head of the screen even though the GT3 runners were struggling with grip.

Torrential overnight rain again washed any rubber laid to welcome todays early runners with a very green Snetterton 300. Free Practice was at 09:30 and with an already damp track, the low hanging grey clouds threatened to dump yet more rain on the circuit.

Tentative opening laps from all, grip was again clearly an issue as only few cars within both classes appeared to be pushing the envelope before most cars sat in their boxes for at least ten minutes before coming out for the final quarter. Eventually, light rain did finally arrive – although not hard enough to effect set up but enough to again make the track more than ‘interesting’ in the words of Warren at the end of session.

The next session, now called Pre-Qualifying went much the same way although the cloud base had lifting, temperatures were rising, and the track was now dry. This time, all runners were on a charge as only four cars were able to circulate without exceeding track limits to have the lap time deleted but the Mercedes and Lamborghini’s were again the pick of the bunch in GT3 and the McLaren Artura and Lotus Emira quickest in GT4.

Finally Qualifying time after lunch and with this round being two-hour long sprint races on Sunday, each driver per car would Qualify their cars respective grid position per race. Starting as usual with the GT3 Am drivers, both Petrobelli and Topham went out first with the Italian eventually finishing fifth quickest (P4 in Pro-Am) with a lap time deleted whilst Topham went clean to finish P9 overall (P4 in Silver-Am).

Next up were the Pro’s with Adam and Rowledge doing the business and in a much more competitive field finished P14/P10 for the #87 of Adam and P14/P4 for the #10 car of Rowledge.

Then came the so far flying Aston Martin Vantage GT4’s from the Forsetti stable with both Warren and Porter up first within the #7 and #47 cars. By now perfect track conditions and not all dashing out with the pack gave both cars ideal track positioning as Porter claimed P2 overall behind the pace setting DTO Ginetta and with Warren coming home somewhat dissatisfied with his own performance P10 overall and P2 within their own GT4 Pro-Am class. 

That was rounded off with both Day and Orton looking to beat those performances and whilst neither could claim pole position, the #47 again stole the march on the #7 by beating them again to claim P4 overall (P2 in class) and with Day finally finishing P6 overall and P3 in class.

That all sets Sunday’s two races up rather nicely, but with both Forsetti cars having to serve additional time within pit lane during race 1, that will be a tough ask even for them.