Dan Brown stole the position at the top of second practice for the Avon Tyres British GT Championship from Trackspeed driver Nick Tandy win the closing minutes of the hour long session at Silverstone.
Tandy, sharing the #31 Porsche with David Ashburn had, himself, knocked Brown’s #888 888Optimum BMW Z4 GT3 off the top spot some ten minutes earlier as the session wound up to a climax after a five minute red flag to allow officials to replace the ‘floppies’ corner markers at Brooklands.
The need to stop the session to effect repairs was testament to the number of warnings handed out for not respecting the edges of the 3.66 mile Grand Prix track.
After the session restarted Brown put the car he shares with Steve Tandy fastest on a lap of 2:03.101 only for Tandy to take four tenths off the benchmark time with a dozen minutes to go. Brown then responded in the dying minutes, setting a best second sector of the session to set a lap of 2.02.766.
Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw’s #33 Trackspeed Porsche was third fastest on a 2:03.168 that had led the session into the red flag stoppage with first practice pace setter John Gaw fourth fastest.
The #79 Ecurie Ecosse, Vita4One Team Italy, Team LNT, Richard Westbrook and Gregor Fisken’s Trackspeed entry, Alvaro Parente’s United Autosports McLaren and the Barwell Motorsport Aston of Richard Abra and Mark Poole completed the top ten.
The best times in GT4 again went to the European teams visiting the championship with the top two times taken by the visitors. The #401 Ekris run BMW M3 GT4 of Ricardo van der Ende and Bernhard van Oranje was fastest throughout the session with the team’s second car second fastest. The best of the British teams was championship leaders Declan Jones and Zoe Wenham, just two tenths of the class lead.
The European teams will score points in the GT4 class of the British GT Championship, meaning that the result of tomorrow’s race, with extra points on offer for the longer race, could seriously alter the championship standings.
The lone cars in both the GTC and GT3B – both run by FF Corse – completed both practice sessions trouble free ending the second session 31st and 33rd overall of the 46 cars that set a time.
