It’s a Bank Holiday weekend and it’s the British GT Championship’s annual visit to Oulton Park so it must still be Easter and the opening round to the new season, right??
Whilst it may co-incidentally still be another Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, it certainly is not Easter as the British national GT championship this times heads back up the M6 for their second round to the season with two one-hour sprint races scheduled in for Monday at the Cheshire circuit.
This year saw the curtain raiser to the new season was held at Silverstone for their championship’s blue ribband event – the three-hour Silverstone 500 which welcomed five Aston Martin Racing powered crews to the Northamptonshire circuit amongst the then twenty-nine entries.
This weekend sees the total number of entries drop slightly to twenty-four cars with the #7 Beechdean AMR still being the sole AMR Vantage GT3 crew representing the marque within the thirteen strong GT3 class with drivers Andrew Howard and Ross Gunn whilst the same four AMR Vantage GT4 crews return within the eleven strong GT4 class.
Whilst the Silverstone circuit proved itself to be a wise opening venue over that of the tight and twisty Oulton Park circuit, the opening round a month ago certainly provided some intensive racing that resulted in prizes for some and thoughts of what might have been for others.
As far as we can see (and how things stand today) there are no changes within the five AMR powered crews with Will Orton/Jessica Hawkins (#21 MK Racing), Dan Lavery/Darren Turner (#27 Grange Racing with FSR), Joe Wheeler/James Townsend (#40 Townsend Racing by Fox Motorsport) and John Hartshorne/Ronan Pearson (#97 GBR Stratton Motorsport) all returning for their crack at two sprint races.
Most of the teams would have been at Oulton Park last week for a final test before this weekend’s event with the Beechdean, MK Racing and GBR Stratton Motorsport teams looking to continue their class podium winning fortune from Silverstone whilst the others look to make amends for their mistakes made that left them out of contention or indeed, out of the race. The #21 will, however, have to serve an additional seven seconds at it scheduled stop during race 1 on Monday having finished second overall in GT4 last time out.
Being a Bank Holiday event at Oulton Park – track action will begin with private testing on Friday before Free Practice, Pre-Qualifying and Qualifying on Saturday before everything has to quieten down for Sunday before the noise grows over the 11:15 and 15:45 starts to the two races.
These two races will certainly be eventful – let’s just hope not dramatically so!
Photo credits – Jacob Ebrey.