British Endurance Championship

Morcillo & Cintrano take Comprehensive Win at Donington

2 Mins read
Donington Park 1/11 Credit: Nick Smith/The Image Team

The Mosler MT900 GT3 of Neil Garner Motorsport has taken the first win of the day at the final meeting of the British Endurance Championship in 2014 at Donington Park.

Starting on pole position Spaniards Javier Morcillo and Manuel Cintrano were comprehensively outpaced by Callum Lockie in his opening stint in the Ferrari 458 Challenge but gentleman driver David Mason couldn’t maintain the pace and eventually finished in fifth place.

At the start the front row, which included Lockie, got enveloped by the rest field with everyone seemingly running clean through Redgate. Unfortunately for the #31 Ferrari of Darren Nelson he was spun by the Mosler and relegated to the back of the grid.

After that the race seemed to settle down, the only incident after the first ten minutes was Salih Yoluc spinning the Ginetta G55 GT4 into the gravel coming out of the chicane – thankfully the marshals managed to push it back out and Yoluc managed to get going again.

With the clock ticking down to an hour left to go, the pits started to open and Neil Garner Motorsport opted to pit early and put Morcillo into the car and claw back what had at that point stretched to a 38 second lead for the FF Corse Ferrari.

After FF Corse pitted, it was apparent that Mason – in his first race since breaking his shoulder in testing a few months back – couldn’t keep up with the blistering times Morcillo was setting and lost the lead one lap after leaving the pits.

From then on it wasn’t a question of would the Spaniards win but by how much, fifty minutes later their gap to second place was three laps.

Eventually finishing second was the #31 of Nelson and co-driver Nigel Greensall after a stunning charge through the field saw them battle with a number of cars including the #38  Optimum Motorsport entry of Euan Hankey and Yoluc.

The battle lasted lap after lap with Greensall taking out a handful of seconds every time they crossed the line before the JHM Automotive driver took the position at the chicane.

That seemed to fire up Greensall, who took aim at Mike Millard in the Pro-Sport and set about reeling him in. Just before the field entered the final ten minutes, Millard ran wide going into Redgate giving Greensall second place.

A bit further down the grid Hankey took Mason for fourth place and tried to make it on to the podium only to run out of time as the chequered flag flew on Morcillo.

With Morcillo taking a class win and the overall win he has cut down the deficit to Lockie and Mason to only 16 points with just the 90 minute night race left to go.

 

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3rd Year Multimedia Journalism Student at Teesside University, interested in motorsport and writing about it as well. I'm also a qualified pilot but I don't mention that much.
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