Triple Eight Race Engineering have confirmed that the #8 car of Lee Mowle and Joe Osborne will not participate in the pair of 60-minute races at Oulton Park on Easter Monday.
The pair’s BMW Z4 GT3 suffered significant damage in an accident in the final minutes of Saturday’s second practice session. Lee Mowle span at the Foulston’s chicane, collecting the Trackspeed run Porsche of Jody Firth and Warren Hughes, which marshals had left by the side of the circuit after Firth had spun out of the session earlier.
“I got the right rear on the grass as I approached the braking zone, and the back just snapped round and swapped ends on me,” explained Mowle. “As the Porsche had been left sitting at the corner, I had nowhere to go and I literally went into the front of it with the passenger side door. It’s destroyed the roll cage, so there is no chance of us getting out on Monday. Even if we did, we’d be starting right at the back of a 34 car grid on a track that is notoriously difficult to overtake on in these big GT3s.”
At the time Mowle’s accident brought out the red flag, ending the session in which Osborne had put the car fastest.
While the Triple Eight duo will now miss the first two races of the British GT season the Trackspeed pair are intending to start the Easter Monday races, though having missed qualifying they will have to start both races from the rear of the bumper field.
Mowle and Osborne, meanwhile, will return to action at Rockingham for the season’s second weekend in early May.
