British GT: Optimum Motorsport take victory for GT3 while Grange Racing fend of MK Racing in GT4 fight at Oulton Park

Optimum Motorsport’s Morgan Tillbrook and Ben Barnicoat took victory in the second race at Oulton Park while Daniel Lavery and Darren Turner took the win in GT4.

Optimum optimises race to take victory in closely fought battle

The Beechdean Aston Martin of Ross Gunn started on pole alongside Barnicoat’s McLaren and the pair would remain throughout the first stint together but will compensation time for the leader to be served for finishing second, it was not too much trouble for the McLaren to find a way passed, especially with the two leaders driving off into the distance, building a ten second margin over Hugo Cook who also has Compensation Time themselves for taking victory in race one of the weekend.

The leaders would pit with Barnicoat swapping over to Tillbrook and Gunn to Andrew Howard. The leaders would swap places giving the Optimum McLaren the lead in the pit stops. However, Howard and Beechdean would benefit from GT4 cars holding up Tillbrook during the second half of the race, allowing himself to catch back up to the McLaren. Kevin Tse and Simon Orange were also benefactors of this, joining the leaders to make it a four-way fight for the race lead.

Despite the drivers all being so close, the four remained linear stern up until the checkered flag giving Tillbrook and Barnicoat their first victory of the season. Howard and Gunn would once again have to settle for second with Tse and Ben Green completing the podium. Orange and Marcus Clutton would finish fourth but a penalty for overtaking GT4 cars under yellow flags would drop them down to ninth. This would promote Rob Collard and Cook to fourth ahead of Alex Martin and Jarrod Waberski. Marc Warren and Jack Brown finished ahead of Jonathon Beeson and Charles Clark’s BMW while Ian Loggie and Aaron Walker would be the last of the benefactors of the Orange McLaren’s penalty. Duncan Cameron and Matt Griffin would complete the top ten.

Grange Racing by FSR take victory by four tenths over MK Racing

The start of the race saw Toro Verde GT’s Jack Mitchell lead early by quite a margin in the early phases. He would hand over to Luke Shaw before retiring with less than a third of the race to go after a steering failure left them into the gravel. This meant the race lead became a battle between the two Aston Martin’s of Grange Racing by FSR and MK Racing.

Turner would run in second early on ahead of Will Orton before the driver swaps and the subsequent retirement of the leader left the two teams fighting over race victory. Lavery in the Grange Racing Aston would be caught by Jessica Hawkins in the MK Racing Aston over the last twenty minutes before mounting pressure on Lavery. Lavery would dip a wheel onto the grass on the exit of Knickerbrook giving Hawkins an opportunity to take the lead. Trying a move into Druids, Hawkins saw this as her best opportunity, but Lavery’s defence was enough to hold the lead and stay ahead at the exit.

This would allow Lavery and Turner to go on to take victory ahead of Hawkins and Orton while Thomas Holland and Hadley Simpson completed the podium. Jack Collins and Branden Templeton would finish fourth ahead of Blake Angliss and Revie Lake while James Townsend and Joe Wheeler finished sixth. John Hartshorne and Ronan Pearson would finish seventh while Ian Duggan and Tom Bradshaw completed the classified runners.