Straight off the back of TF Sport announcing their four GT4 driver line up for this season's British GT Championship comes a similar confirmation of the first of an expected two GT4 entry from 2018 Champions Optimum Motorsport.

With GT5 graduate Connor O'Brien already having been confirmed with the team a few weeks ago, today finally sees Jerseyman Jack Butel step across from his previous dealings in the LMP3 Cup to be confirmed as the co driver in that car to form another silver-silver pairing.

Todays announcement also sees the first visual indication of any livery on a new 2019 specification V8 Vantage GT4 - and it looks nice!.


Butel is presently out with the Optimum team over in Dubai in preparation for this weekends 24H Series 24 Hour race with the team's Ginetta G55 GT4 as he gets valuable winter seat time as he converts his style of driving back to a less area dependant GT car from that of a prototype. By the sounds of it, Butel (like many of the others) has only had limited seat car aboard the new turbo charged car at the now infamous Oulton Park collective test last year and he (like all the others) is eagerly anticipating the start of pre season testing once the AMR factory have delivered the first batch of cars to their customer teams.

Losing the capacity to compute just how many new variant Aston Martin Racing Vantages there will be at the opening round of the British GT Championship from Oulton Park in April - one thing for sure is that it will be a heck of a season!

Photo credits - Optimum / Jack Butel

Launched just a couple of weeks ago by the ACO, this free to download and free to use '24 ON SITE' application has been designed to help spectators fulfil as much as a viewing experience at the 24H race as possible.

With the circuit, amenities and events spread over such a vast area sometimes, and particularly for new attendees, finding out where to go and when is sometimes just down to luck or by just following the madding crowd. This application helps with that predicament by listing all of the events both at the circuit and even in some of the surrounding villages with times and locations for shows like the great British Welcome at Saint Saturnin on the Friday.


Having a brief look through the others services offered by the app most sections can be considered as either being practically useful or t least make for good, informative reading whilst you are waiting in the lulls in-between events.

The map function is particularly useful, being able to zoom in so that you can find your position and work out your path to the next vantage point or circuit crossing tunnel/bridge.


The million dollar question is of course the quality of mobile signal your device can receive at a circuit that has 250,000 other users at it, so signal maybe an issue. Other than that, and simply because its cost free its well worth the download onto your Apple or Google device.


Screen shots from application