Despite this obviously being another endurance round of the Championship, there is no MKH Racing AMR Vantage GT4 so all eyes will be upon these two easily identifiable cars competing within this twenty-two strong grid.
The day officially kicked off earlier with the usual Free Practice and Pre-Qualifying sessions where the #97 Beechdean car of Andrew Howard and Toim Wood stole the thunder from many of their GT3 opponents by finishing second quickest whilst the #7 Blackthorn Aston of Giacomo Petrobelli and Jonny Adam had to make do with fourth quickest.
It was a similar vein within Pre-Qualifying with the #97 Beechdean again beating the #7 car going into Qualifying as the Blackthorn crew looked to change the balance of the car ahead of the two individual qualifying sessions.
Petrobelli and Howard respectively were out first with the Italian pushing straight from the off the maximise impact with the new tyres whilst others built up to the faster laps but this time, Petrobelli was by far the fastest with a time nearly three quarters of a second above their nearest rival whilst Howard (importantly) beat his fellow silver-am competitor within the #86 Honda.
Adam and Wood were next out and whilst the Scot had to build up to his quickest lap, the buffer that Petrobelli has established within his earlier run was enough for the pairing to gain their first pole position of the season. Whilst the #86 Honda NSX obviously struggled with balance around the circuit, that was enough for Wood to also finish P1 in class to gain the #97 car a further class pole position ahead of tomorrow’s race.
Then the racing will really start!
Photo credits – Jacob Ebrey