Grid has been been set (and changed) ahead of the British GT two hour race from Donington Park

Qualifying was completed a couple of hours ago ahead of tomorrow’s penultimate round of the British GT Championship but between then and us getting home, everything has changed as the three (faster) Ginetta’s have all been disqualified from their sessions on a technical infringement.

Having had a few hours of track time on Thursday to get in some early laps during private testing, the lower-than-normal grid of twenty-seven GT3 and GT4 cars were back in business this morning for the first of two one-hour sessions (Free Practice and Pre-Qualifying) before this afternoons all important individual qualifying runs.

 

The Grange Racing by FSR were reporting how their new BoP for the event had been challenging for them as they had to deal with additional ballast amongst others things although the #27 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 of Dan Lavery and Darren Turner were always up at the sharper end of the timing screen despite these apparent hardships.

The #97 GBR Stratton Motorsport were welcoming back their new young gun in Jordan Collard to join their full season entrant John Hartshorne for these remain two rounds of the season. He laps on Thursday were his first competitive laps within any race car for about four years he said over the circuit commentary.

 

The #21 MK Racing AMR Vantage GT4 Silver pairing of Jessica Hawkins and Will Orton gave their team an early headache after an off-track excursion during todays morning session had damaged the front splitter without another seemingly being available at the circuit. Despite this, the necessary repairs were made and that didn’t seem to affect the pairing too much over the remaining sessions.

The #40 Townsend Motorsport AMR of James Townsend and Joe Wheeler appeared to have an uneventful morning – although the pairing were slowest by the end of both sessions. That was a similar tail for the #007 Beechdean AMR Vantage GT3 of Andrew Howard and Ross Gunn who also finished their morning runs at the lower end of the GT3 class.

 

Despite the skies clouding over a bit more over lunch, the sun was back out in force in time for the four qualifying sessions where each driver per car was required to set a time with the aggregate of such setting their position upon the grid for tomorrows two-hour race and with qualifying having been run on track at least, the performances of all five Aston Martins had seen them left within their respective midfield.

Then comes the announcement of problems with all three Ginetta’s. Whilst the #007 Beechdean GT3 is unaffected by this and will start from P7 on the grid, the four Vantage GT4 crews all move up three places with the #27 Grange Racing car now grabbing GT4 Pro-Am pole position again for another front row start in GT4 with the #21 MK Racing crew just behind in third. The #97 GBR Stratton pips their more established rivals within the #40 Townsend car with each starting P7 and P8 overall within GT4 respectively.

 

But of course, two hours around Donington Park usually turns all of the above upon its head at least once or twice during the race so the race result is still a blank canvas.