British GT: Collard and Cook win the opening Oulton Park race in exceptional fashion while Optimum take GT4 honours

The first of two British GT races at Oulton Park saw Rob Collard and Hugo Cook take victory in the hour long event while Optimum took advantage of rival accident.

Collard started on pole from Giacomo Petrobelli and despite the Aston Martin's drivers best attempt to get by the Lamborghini, it was Collard who maintained the lead out front.

Kevin Tse kept behind the pairing in third while Simon Orange took positions from Charles Dawson and Richard Neary in the opening phase of the race.

GT4 would see Josh Miller start on pole in the Lotus Emira but a gearbox problem at the start would see all hope for the squad crushed, handing the lead to Ravi Ramyead after jumping past Luca Hopkinson's Optimum Motorsport. The top two fought hard allowing Marc Warren to close in and when the first of the GT3's came up on them, Warren flew by Hopkinson.

The top three in GT3 would remain in the same positions across the opening stint before a full course yellow was deployed due to Ramyead in the Century Motorsport BMW, who was leading GT4, had an accident ending his race.

With the driver swaps in GT3, Hugo Cook kept the Barwell Lamborghini in the lead from the 2 Seas squad who jump to second with Maximillian Götz now at the wheel. This was due to the 5 second compensation time that the Blackthorn Aston Martin had that had dropped them to third. The second of the 2 Seas Mercedes' would be in 4th but had earned themselves a 10 second time penalty for a collision with the Simon Orange McLaren.

GT4 saw a Optimum 1-2 after the incident and with the pit stops swapping drivers, Jack Brown took over from Warren and Harry George took over from Hopkinson.

Cook would get the field back underway while Götz tried to chase him. Both of them would drop Jonny Adam in third at first before a continuous series of fastest laps brought the Blackthorn squad back into the fight for the win.

The Optimum Motorsport battle in GT4 saw Brown pull away from George and the second of the McLaren's having to fight the Mahiki Racing Lotus of Jack Mitchell for second.

At races end however, no one could stop Cook and Barwell Motorsport as they win the first of two races at Oulton Park from the 2 Seas squad of Tse and Götz. Petrobelli and Adam rounded out the podium for GT3.

Jack Brown cruised to victory fir GT4 ahead of Jack Mitchell in second. A drive through penalty was handed to Harry George for exceeding track limits on too many occasions giving Chris Salkeld and Branden Templeton the final podium spot.