Starting with the additional entries, we welcome back the #31 MKH Racing AMR Vantage GT4 that Peter Montague and Stuart Hall used for most of their GT4 Endurance Cup rounds this season. For this season finale however, the black and purple liveried car will be driven by their two Ginetta and GT Cup Championship graduates Michael Orant and Owen Hizzy.
We also welcome back a second Blackthorn AMR Vantage GT3 crew (like they did for the Silverstone 500 with team boss Claude Bovet and Charles Bateman) but this time around we welcome a new face in Darren Leung pairing up with Nick Yellowly within the team’s #6 car.
Only a few weeks ago did we see social media shots of the BMW racer Leung taking a team Vantage GT3 out for a spin under the watchful eye of David Pittard.
But back to the present and its game on for both the #7 Blackthorn AMR crew of Giacomo Petrobelli and Jonny Adam as well as the #97 Beechdean AMR crew of Andrew Howard and Tom Wood as both crews chase down that still illusive Overall and Silver-Am drivers championships respectively by the end of Sunday’s race.
The #7 crew presently sit in second place within the overall GT3 Drivers Championship, twenty-eight and a half points behind the leading 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes AMG GT3 crew of Charles Dawson and Kiern Jewiss but with thirty-seven and a half points still up for grabs for Sunday’s race winner – anything can (and usually does) happen over the course of the weekend. It is a very similar story between these two crews within the GT3 Pro-Am Drivers Championship too.
Then in the Silver-Am class – the #97 Beechdean crew presently lead the way from the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX racer of Jonny Ip but their lead of just fourteen points could be easily overridden and surpassed by the #86 crew if the #97 crew failed to be classified. Being just the two entries within the class the whole season, so far neither crew has failed to score (first or second in class points obviously) so the #97 crew would still need to be classified as a finisher within the race to secure the title.
Private testing this Thursday begins the track action for the combined grid of twenty-six cars before the start to more formally timed sessions on Saturday morning with Free Practice before Pre-Qualifying at midday. The afternoon will then be filled with the four qualifying sessions (one per driver) before everything will settle down again before race start at 13:15hrs on Sunday.