Porsche 996 - Photo Credit: Chris Gurton Photography
Hour eleven at the Britcar 24 hour race, which took place between 02:30 and 03:30, provided us with action in the form of another safety car appearance and some change at the sharp end of Classes Three andFour.
The safety car came about 22 minutes into the eleventh hour after the No. 59 car, the MB Racing Aston Martin N24 GT4, had an incident at Copse after an ABS and gearbox failure. The car eventually made its way back round to the pits under its own steam and the safety car was out for less than ten minutes.
There was no change at the top during this hour. The leader remained the No. 2 Eclipse Motorsport Ferrari, which remained at the head of the pack despite a scheduled pit stop at the end of its 250th race lap.
At the end of hour, the No. 57 car, the Marcos Racing Lotus, took the lead of Class Three by overtaking car 49, the Nicholas Mee Racing Aston Martin GT4. The gap between the two was closing steadily throughout the hour and, eventually, the Lotus moved ahead.
The woes of the No.7 team depend after they received a 90-second stop/go penalty. However, in the grand scheme of things, the extra time did not make a huge amount of difference to their position, with the BMW Z4 already over eighty laps off the leader.
The Topcats Racing Marcos slipped a couple of places after a pit stop during hour eleven, but still remained comfortably at the top of Class 2.
The hour was rounded off by pit stops for cars 3 and 1, who were sitting second and third, respectively. These passed without incident and, by the end of hour eleven, the top three places where occupied exclusively by Class One vehicles.
Class One:
1 – No.2 Ferrari – McInerney/McInerney/Keen
2 – No.3 Mosler – Beaumont/Fletcher/Draper/Hetherington
3 – No.1 Ferrari – Gamski/Robinson/Gaw/Dryburgh
Class Two:
1 – No.27 Marcos – Upton/Huggins/Fletcher/Orton
2 – No.5 Porsche – Konopka/O'Donnell/Myszkowski/Lewandowski/Edwards
Class Three:
1 – No.57 Lotus – Euser/Prewitt/Brody/Freebird/McKinnon
2 – No.49 Aston Martin – Le Blanc/Van Lanschot/De Zille/Nimkoff
3 – No.68 BMW – Clarke/Gibson/Radcliffe/Hayes
Class Four:
1 – No.89 BMW – Griffiths/Green/Forsbrey/Kirkpatrick
2 – No.88 Honda – Smail/Meins/Lillingston-Price/Harding
3 – N0.84 Seat – Breukers/Thijssen/Jensiew/Han
