British GT: The 2024 Father-Son Title Win

Rob and Ricky Collard won the 2024 British GT championship in the GT3 category and became the second father-son team to do so in an intense finale.

The last few years had been emotional for the Collard family. In 2020, Rob Collard made his debut in the British GT category with Barwell Motorsport after a long career in the BTCC where he would claim fifthteen victories and would have a best championship finish 5th on three separate occasions come seasons end. He was immediately on pace in the series having taken 4th place in the opening round at Oulton Park alongside teammate Sandy Mitchell before finishing 2nd in race two at the venue that same weekend behind fellow Barwell Motorsport drivers Adam Balon and Phil Keen. After a 5th and 6th at the third and fourth rounds at Donighton, Collard and Mitchell would take their first victory at Brands Hatch. With them taking another podium at the first Snetterton race and a victory in the finale at Silverstone, this gave the team enough points to overcome the twelve-point deficit they had heading into the finale to take the GT3 championship. After leaving British GT, he raced in GT World Challenge Europe where in 2023 he finished the pro-am championship runner-up alongside Dennis Lind.

Meanwhile Ricky Collard had a much different story. After finishing runner up in the MSA Formula Championship in 2015 with six wins to his name, and the following year finishing runner up once more in the British Formula 3 Championship with a further five race wins, he would move to the ADAC GT Masters series for the first six races taking a victory and a two podiums there. 2018 saw him begin the year with two podiums in the British GT championship in the GT4 category. He would also enter the Blancpain GT Series Endurance cup but unfortunately his team retired from all four races he entered with them. He joined the BTCC for the latter third of the year replacing his father Rob who had been withdrawn due to a concussion suffered at Snetterton. He claimed a podium at Silverstone later that season before leaving the series once more. After a year in GT World Challenge Europe in 2019 where he claimed a single win at the Nürburgring, the following two years was filled with one of GT3 campaigns. 2022 saw him return to the BTCC but after another disappointing campaign he initially announced his retirement from racing. This decision was later reverted where he would end up staying with Toyota Gazoo Racing for another year claiming one more podium in the BTCC.

In February of 2024 it was announced that the father and son duo would return to British GT for Barwell Motorsport in their GT3 Lamborghini Huracan. The first round at Oulton Park was the best way to start their nine-race campaign. After starting on pole position, they went on to take victory ahead of Phil Keen and Ian Loggie. The second round saw the Collard’s qualify in 4th behind rivals Keen and Loggie in third while their Rob’s former co-driver Sandy Mitchell as well as Alex Martin qualified on pole in the other Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini. By the end of the race, they dropped to fifth place behind the Garage 59 entry of Shaun Balfe and Adam Smalley.

The Silverstone and Donighton rounds saw the pair take home two more fifth places but would drop down to third in the standings after the Garage 59 entry took victory at Silverstone and with a further eighth place in Donighton, meant the Collards were half a point behind them. Meanwhile their teammates took their second pole and victory of the season at Donighton Park moving them 12.5 points clear.

For round five, the teams crossed the Channel to Belgium for a two-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps where the father-son pairing qualified second but was given a ten-place grid penalty for not slowing sufficiently under yellow flags. Despite this the pair clawed themselves back up the order to finished third in a red flagged shortened race after an incident earlier on. This meant the gap between the top three in the standings was shrunk down to eight points with the Collard’s trailing both of their rivals in third.

A double header at Snetterton meant a double podium for Rob and Ricky with them finishing second on both occasions. Despite starting on pole in the first race of the weekend they would lose out to their teammates in this first race with Martin and Mitchell taking the lead and taking victory while rivals Balfe and Smalley finished down in 10th place at the end of the race. Race two saw a different story play out with the championship leading pair taking pole for the third time this season while Ricky and Rob were down in 7th and the Garage 59 entry in ninth. While initially it was another win for the Martin and Mitchell pairing, they were handed a 30-second post-race penalty due to Martin overtaking under yellow flags. This dropped the team who looked to have a firm grip on the championship down to tenth while also promoting their teammates to second place. After taking another pole and victory in Donighton while their rivals finished behind them, this gave the pairing the championship lead heading into Brands Hatch.

Despite having the championship lead heading into Brands Hatch, they also had to serve an extra twenty seconds in the pitlane. After an early Safety Car, the RJN car was being closed upon by the championship contenders. Another Full Course Yellow was deployed due to a crash at Stirlings by Simon Orange ten minutes before the pit window. It remained in place until after the pit window had closed leaving Ricky Collard in fifth after the pitstops. Despite George Gamble getting passed Ricky off the restart dropping him to sixth, they came home comfortably in that position to take home the title despite their rivals taking home maximum points.

After rewriting championship history where they became the second father-son pairing to win the British GT title, it was an emotional rollercoaster for them, never finishing outside of the top five all season and this gave Rob Collard second GT3 championship, being only the third driver to win multiple GT3 Championships in British GT.