Reigning double Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion Michael Meadows led the first official test of the year at the championship’s media day yesterday (18/03/14), behind the wheel of the new Type 991 generation 911 GT3 Cup.
Meadows set the standard with a 55.810s around Silverstone’s short and snappy National layout, more than a second inside the existing lap record and also faster than Porsche works driver Nick Tandy’s 2011 qualifying record. “Today we were really just shaking it down and it is going to blow last year’s lap times away” confirmed the day’s pace setter.
Several cars did not run with transponders, so judging the overall competitive nature of the field is arguably irrelevant. However, we do know Meadow’s nearest challenger was his Redline Racing team mate and Porsche GB Scholar for the 2014-2015 seasons Josh Webster. Webster’s time meant he was only a quarter of a second behind his far more experienced team mate, all in all an impressive debut. “The initial pace is looking good but it is early days” commented the former GP3 contender.
Karl Leonard (Pro-Am1) racing for Team Parker Racing lapped within half a second of pace setter Meadow’s best time, whilst the Pro-Am2 category is set for a revival in 2014. Peter Kyle-Henney, running for Parr Motorsport, Will Goff (In2Racing) and Steven Liquorish (Team Parker Racing) all ran during the test session adding a depth to this portion of the series. At several 2013 rounds Pro-Am2 had no entries.
The Carrera Cup GB teams will be out testing in the remaining period leading up to the Brands Hatch opener at the end of the month, many deals are coming together late for 2014 so expect an influx of entries as round one approaches.