Beechdean take the Silver-Am class honours after an exciting British GT opener from Donington (AMENDED)

With crowds still queuing to get within the circuit at the lunch time pit walk, race organisers soon elected to run that within the paddock area to avoid the inevitable crush and frustrations that a twenty-minute exercise would create within pit lane – that all went down well with the crowd, especially with a carton of Beechdean mint choc chip ice cream!

With the cars getting to the grid, an unusual event took place within the #50 MKH Racing Vantage GT4 as a supporting Stuart Hall was surprised not to find Peter Montague within his car having took heed to a required call of nature.

Eventually getting down to racing it was a smooth start from all that surprisingly saw nobody take to the gravel on the opening laps and that quickly allowed all to find their rhythm in the opening laps.

Whilst the #7 car of Petrobelli was holding station in fifth overall, the #97 Beechdean AMR of Andrew Howard was getting baulked by the #86 Honda both on track and in class but biding his time, Howard soon got past.

Twenty minutes in, the GT3 leaders were soon passing the GT4 tail enders just as an error from the #66 Porsche out of the Old Hairpin saw the #1 Lamborghini spin out in avoidance – only to return to the track directly in front of a battling #97 and #86 that saw the Aston lose out and drop back behind their class rival again.

Just after the opening half hour, the race all went wrong for the #7 Blackthorn AMR of Petrobelli after a hopeful lunge down the inside saw contact with the #88 Lotus GT4, contact that left the Aston with heavy front-end damage and a GT4 stuck in the gravel – Safety Car!! Whilst the team kept the car out on track, the inevitable penalty was coming their way as well as a front end to the car that the factory had never intended!

Eventually getting back to green just before the opening of the pit window, the #7 car was indeed given a ten second stop/go penalty for the earlier contact plus having to revisit pit lane again for the mandatory driver change and necessary repairs to avoid that ‘meatball’ flag for the cars condition on track.

With GT4’s pitting first, the #50 MKH Racing Vantage was first in as Montague was swapped out for Stuart Hall with investigations of their own hanging over them for their Safety Car/FCY procedures. 

Beechdean however, made their decisive move within the pit lane after Howard’s swap out to local racer Tom Wood saw the #97 car take the Silver-Am lead by a considerable margin as knowledge and experience saw the AMR crew beat the Honda crew on turn around. Racing up to the top 10 overall with 45 minutes to go, Wood looked more than comfortable in class but was unable to move up any further overall.

With the race counting off their final laps, it would be a P8 overall and P1 in Silver-Am finish for the Howard/Wood/Beechdean crew whilst the #7 Blackthorn crew would have to settle for a disappointing P12 overall/P10 in Pro-Am finish for them. The MKH Racing team would see out their first Endurance Cup outing within the Championship with a P21 finish overall, P2 within their own class behind that of the #12 Team Parker Mercedes.

It’s been a great start to 2025, next stop will be from Silverstone in three weeks’ time.