Despite leading for the entire second half of the race the CRS Racing duo of Jim and Glynn Geddie had to make do with second place at Snetterton in the third race of the 2011 Avon Tyres British GT Championship.
The team had only received the new Ferrari 458 Italia days before the two-hour race, but Glynn Geddie was still able to put the no.10 car on pole position in Saturday's qualifying session.
The car was started by Jim, Glynn's father, and in a car he was still adapting on a track made treacherous by rain showers he slipped back to fourth in the opening hour, before pitting to hand the car over to the 20-year-old.
By virtue of stopping earlier than their rivals, and the younger Geddie immediate pace on track, they were leading the race when the pitstop window closed with 50 minutes of the race to go. Victory looked to be sealed – challengers falling foul of drive through penalties and on track contact – by front bodywork damage to the Apex Tubulars backed car reached a crucial point just laps from the end, prompting officials to put out the 'meatball' flag calling Glynn to bring the car in for repairs.
“It's the most disappointed I've been with second,” said Glynn. “To be fair, I'm more disappointed with whoever made the decision to call us into the pits. We got second when it clearly should have been a win, and it's disappointing not to get it when it was right there in front of us.”
The rudimentary work was done in the briefest of stops on the penultimate lap, but the time spent in the pitlane still dropped them to second place behind the United Autosports Audi R8 LMS.
There was more frustration for Andrew Tate and Tim Mullen (the latter joining the British GT team for a week in place of Alex Mortimer). Their older Ferrari 430 Scuderia stopped early on with gearbox problems.
“It was a good weekend for CRS,” maintained team principal, Andrew Kirkaldy. “Due to the very late arrival of a loaned 458 the whole team worked all night on Friday to get the car ready for the weekend. Due to the car having raced for several weeks in a row and suffering damage the weekend was always going to be difficult. I hope that Andrew (Tate) has a better run at Brands. He was again doing a very good job and with Tim I am sure a great result was on the cards. The result in the end was good for the whole team. Once we have our own cars we will look forward to making a real impression on the series.”
