Glynn Geddie put the CRS Racing Ferrari 458 Italia he will share with father Jim on pole position for the two-hour Avon Tyres British GT Championship race at Snetterton.
The team had initially planned to use – again – their older 430 Scuderia cars for the second weekend of the season, but took delivery of Ferrari's latest GT3 racer on Friday. Despite the lack of preparation time with the new car Geddie wasted no time in setting the lap that would take pole.
Inside the first ten minutes of the half hour session Geddie had driven the no.10 car around the Snetterton 300 track in a time of 1:50.929.
“We took a bit of a gamble with the set-up and it worked,” he said. “We made good improvements in the session, which is a positive for the team, which has worked so hard today. We only got the car at eight o'clock last night, so to put it on pole is a good reward for them.”
The lap gave the Aberdeen driver a healthy one second advantage when the red flag came out to allow recovery of Florian Renauer's Century Motorsport G55 that had stopped on the new infield section.
Though Geddie returned to the track one the red flag was gathered back in he couldn't improve on his time, and all the while potential usurpers were edging closer and closer to the fastest time. Stuart Hall was the first to move into second when running resumed, the Vantage Racing team ending the session an impressive fourth in their first British GT appearance this season.
Ultimately Matt Bell took second for United Autosport, though his time (1:51.398) was nearly half a second down on Geddie's marker. Allan Simonsen claimed third place with his penultimate lap. The Rosso Verde 430 Scuderia still a competitive proposition in the Dane's hand beating the newer Ferrari 458 Italia of MTECH and Scuderia Vittoria, though the former was limited to just six laps after a gearbox change earlier in the day.
Both Trackspeed Porsches struggled for much of the session, languishing well off the pace and outside of the top ten until the closing exchanges of the session.
Tim Bridgman was as hgh as fourth in the no.2 car he shares with Gregor Fisken, but was shuffled down to eleventh by the checkered flag, one place behind the no.1 car, qualified by Phil Keen.
The ABG Motorsport KTMs finished first and second in GT4
After missing qualifying for the season openers at Oulton Park Athanasios Ladas and Michael Mallock claimed GT4 class pole in the ABG Motorsports KTM X-Bow and the sister car of Peter Belsham and Marcus Clutton second fastest, only 0.019 seconds between them.
“We were gutted when we missed qualifying at Oulton Park as the circuit suits the KTM and we were really confident we could have taken pole,” Mallock said. “Snetterton isn't one of best circuits with the long straight but I was lucky to be able to get a tow off another car and set a time good enough for top spot. It's nice to start from pole after my first qualifying session of the year.”
Freddy Nordstrom and Leyton Clarke upheld local honour, their Lotus Evora third fastest in class.
The GT3B class MTECH car of Aaron Scott and John Dhillon was fifteenth fastest overall. The GTC class Chevron was two places further back after a technical problem left the car stranded out on track.
