Jamie Orton continued his superb start to the 2015 Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup season with pole position in qualifying at Donington Park.
Orton set the pace at Brands Hatch two weeks ago with pole position and a pair of race wins, as well as topping the timesheets in the official pre-event tests at Thruxton and Donington Park recently.
The HHC Motorsport racer carried that momentum into qualifying, with a best time of 1m 09.235s securing him his third career Supercup pole position by nearly three tenths of a second.
Orton’s closest challenger proved to be Tom Oliphant, the Century Motorsport ace snatching second on the timesheets in the last couple of minutes with a time of 1m 09.407s – in the process splitting up the HHC contingent at the head of the pack.
Joint championship leader Carl Breeze was third fastest, 0.077s behind Oliphant, with the third HHC contender Will Burns close behind as the same four drivers who led the way at Brands Hatch did so again in Leicestershire.
Mitchell Hale ran them close though, the SV Racing ace just edging out JHR Developments’ Michael Caine for fifth by one hundredth of a second. Bradley Smith secured seventh on the grid for the first of the weekend’s three races, doing so in the G55 ran by Richard Roberts at Brands Hatch.
Smith’s G55 is being used by Colin White this weekend as he returns to his own CWS Racing outfit, the Ginetta stalwart setting the AM class pace once again in twelfth overall ahead of class rivals Osamu Kawashima, Chris Ingram and Fraser Robertson.
White finished up half a second shy of former British GT champion Bradley Ellis, who was a second and a half off the pace on his Supercup debut with SV – with Tom Wrigley, Brands race-winner Reece Somerfield and Ollie Jackson having completed the top ten.
Rob Boston, a Supercup race-winner in 2013, had a tough return to the championship in the car David Pittard took to second in the standings last year, an unfortunate spin into the gravel on cold tyres on the opening lap leaving him timeless at the bottom off the standings.
Full qualifying results can be found here.