Despite losing more than half of the session to a driveshaft problem Steve Tandy and Joe Osborne set the fastest time of the second practice session for the Avon Tyres British GT Championship at Silverstone.
Osborne set what would remain the fastest lap of the session (2:04.708) on his very first flying lap in the #32 Trackspeed Porsche, but just two laps later – still in the first ten minutes of the hour long free practice session – Osborne and the Porsche were stranded on track, resulting a five minute red flag that temporarily halted the session.
It would be a further half hour before the car remerged from the garage, now with Steve Tandy at the wheel, but already winners twice this year the pair remained unmoved from the top of the times, no-one succeeding in lapping within six tenths of a second of Osborne’s early lap.
In fact, the best of the rest only breached the seven tenths barrier to Osborne in the closing minutes of the session. John Gaw came close in the Cyber Racing Aston Martin Vantage, collating an absolute best and two personal best sector times to go second fastest, but still 0.715 seconds down on Osborne.
It was Matt Bell in the United Autosports McLaren MP4-12C who finally got to just 0.647 slower than the Porsche driver at the end of a run that moved the Snetterton winner gradually up the order, taking second after a stop over in fourth place on his way up the order.
A Michael Caine lap put the #11 Motorbase Porsche fourth fastest, only pushed out of second by Gaw and Bell’s late improvement. Riki Christodoulou ensured that the Team WFR Ginetta G55 GT3 had another strong run in fifth, the Beechdean Aston Martin the last of the top six cars covered by a second.
MTECH, pace setters in the first session, were only eighth fastest though Matt Griffin’s FP1 lap remained the best lap of the day when the session times are combined with only two of the top ten times overall coming from the second session.
Tandy and Osborne were not the only Trackspeed drivers to suffer technical drama during the session with David Ashburn and Phil Keen limited to just seven laps between them in the #31 Porsche.
Team WFR were again fastest in GT4, this time with the APO Sport Ginetta G50 as their nearest challenger, albeit over a second slower that Team WFR’s similar machine.
