The temperatures keep rising at Snetterton this weekend

Two exciting races will be in store tomorrow as the British GT Championship hosts only its second sprint weekend of the season, this time from Snetterton in Norfolk for its somewhat lowly GT3 and GT4 entry.

Having already conducted a three-session private test at the circuit yesterday, the crews were welcomed back today to another sun-baked day starting with Free Practice before culminating in individual qualifying sessions to determine the grid for each of Sunday’s two, one-hour races.

This weekend sees just the two full season Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 crews from the Blackthorn AMR and Beechdean AMR teams with Giacomo Petrobelli and Jonny Adam chasing the GT3 Pro-Am class within their #7 car and Andrew Howard and Tom Wood doing likewise within the Silver-Am class within their #97 car.

The #7 Blackthorn was slow out within Free Practice with the duo only setting thirteen laps between them within the hour-long session (although Adam did say that this for no significant reason) whilst the Beechdean crew were a little more studious getting some early laps in. 

As both the ambient and track temperatures continued to rise, it was soon time for Pre-qualifying and this time both cars were keen to get out early but with the #97 crew showing some great pace to end that hour session seventh overall (and having lost a lap due to track limits) whilst the #7 car would end their preparative work down in tenth overall.

After lunch, it was time for each driver to set their own qualifying times with the amateur’ driver going first but for both Petrobelli and Howard, it would bring a disappointing conclusion as first the Italian lost out on another pole setting time by just 0.151 of a second to their championship rivals but Howard also struggled to eventually come home 0.8 of a second behind their Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX powered class rivals.

The next session saw Adam claim a third row start for tomorrow’s second race whilst Wood beat the #86 Bridger car to claim another class pole position for his efforts.

We will have to wait to see just what the two races will bring.