Earlier, we saw inaugural class podium positions for the #59 Racing Spirit of Leman AMR Vantage LMGT3 of Derek DeBoer (shared with Valentin Hasse-Clot and Casper Stevenson with the #97 Grid Motorsport with TF Sport AMR of Martin Berry (with Lorcan Hanafin and Jonny Adam) claim the third spot in class ahead of their four hour European Le Mans Series race from Mugello later today.

That was added to at the same event as the debuting #90 Blackthorn AMR Vantage GT3 of James Swift (with Rob Kaiser) do likewise with a front row start for yesterday’s supporting Michelin Le Mans Cup Series race at Mugello.

Moving back to the UK, and there was a triple achievement to this fact as the new look for this round Beechdean AMR Vantage GT3 car of Andrew Howard and Tom Wood secured a Silver-AM P2 starting position at Brands Hatch whilst the two GT4 Championship protagonists from the Forsetti Motorsport team both claimed a class P3 starting position ahead of this afternoons finale in the British GT Championship.

Back into Europe and it was a first pole position qualifying results for the #55 Zakspeed ESM Vantage GT4 for Phillip Gogollok and Jan Marschalkowski within the ADAC GT4 Germany visit to the Red Bull Ring whilst four varying Racar Motorsport and Mirage Racing AMR Vantage GT4 crews enjoyed similar success within yesterday’s two Qualifying rounds for this weekend’s Iberian Supercar Series visit to Valencia. The only exception to this was for the two Walkenhorst cars running within the ADAC GT Masters Series at the venue too.

Obviously, some of these races have now been run, the results of which will be covered later, by todays main point of interest remains that of the British GT Champiosnhip where the two Forsetti crews of Mikey Porter/Jamie Day and Marc Warren/Will Orton remain very much within further class Championship contention going into this afternoon’s final two-hour race of the season.

Game on.

Photo credits – Teams / series / social media / Jacob Ebrey

After previous rounds at Barcelona and Paul Ricard (with Le Mans somewhere in between), forty-two cars figure upon this weekends entry list which is of course split between the Series available LMP2, LMP3 and GTE classes.

No changes within the expected running order for the three full season Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTE entries as TF Sport again provide the mechanical services to their #72 (Arnold Robin/Max Robin/Valentin Hasse-Clot) and the #95 car (John Hartshorne/Jonny Adam/Ben Tuck) as well as the Danish #44 GMB Motorsport AMR of Jens Moller/Gustav Birch and a returning Nikki Thiim.

After the racing horrors of Barcelona when two of the Aston Martin runners were eliminated from the race on the opening lap, a Balance of Performance change to the Vantage ahead of round two saw much better performances all round with the #95 car claiming a class podium in P3 whilst certainly the #72 would have finished higher than its eventual P7 had it not been for earlier contact.

Yesterday’s test saw steady progress from the three Astons during both available morning and afternoon sessions with the #95 TF Sport car second fastest in both sessions whilst the other two ran something of a more conservative pace. In today’s Free Practice, we saw those performances reversed as the #44 GMB car became the fastest Aston in P4 with the #95 towards the bottom of the timing screen – so who knows who’s fastest!!

Tomorrow sees a late Free Practice 2 session before Qualifying on Saturday morning as the teams gear themselves up for this weekend’s four-hour night race.

Having had a golden debut of pole position in Qualifying to class victory last time out at Barcelona at the end of April, endurance for the drivers will take on a whole new meaning as they run parallel driver programmes around one of the longest and toughest circuits that they will compete at this year.

At the end of the opening Free Practice session yesterday, the #10 car finished fastest in class with a best lap time being an incredible 3.8 seconds faster than anyone else within the twenty strong GT3 class before electing not to run during today’s second Free Practice session in favour of their LM24 efforts.

Today’s later dual Qualifying sessions saw Hasse-Clot (like many others) again struggle with track limits to come home posting a time worthy of P19 in class as the cars faster laps were lost to that transgression.

With the Vantage GT3 unchanged from Barcelona in terms of Balance of Performance, this afternoons opening fifty-five-minute race will be eventful as the French duo look to duplicate their opening round achievement with their home-based fans at the circuit today.

Green flag is waved at 18:30hrs local.