Tom Oliphant feels his first full season in GT racing this year has been a success after posting top five championship finishes in both the GT4 class of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship and the Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup.
Former single-seater racer Oliphant made the transition to GT racing towards the end of 2013 with two outings in the Supercup as a warm-up to his dual campaign this year with Century Motorsport.
His British GT debut saw him competing alongside reigning GT4 champion Rick Parfitt Jnr. It proved to be a frustrating season for the pair, with a host of problems meaning they could only convert consistent front-running pace into a solitary class win at the Donington Park season finale.
In the Supercup meanwhile, Oliphant ran at the front of a competitive field all campaign. A maiden category win on weekend two at Donington set the tone for an impressive campaign that returned ten podium finishes.
The highlight was a dominant weekend at Snetterton after the summer break, a podium hat-trick in Norfolk that featured his second and final win of the campaign.
After that meeting Oliphant sat just ten points shy of the championship top three, but he was left to rue some bad luck in the remaining races that left him out of the top three fight at the finish, leaving him with unfinished business in the series.
“It’s certainly been a long year combining the Supercup and the British GT,” said Oliphant. “Overall for my first year in GT’s, to finish fourth in British GT and fifth in Supercup, I’m pretty happy.”
“I’ve had ten podiums in the Supercup this year, finishing on the podium in more than a third of the races, and I’ve gone and won races. I’ve also beaten all the guys on track who finished ahead of me in the championship plenty of times, so it just comes down to your worst rounds really.
“Most the guys who beat me in the series this year have had a year in GT cars of sorts, or done this championship before, which naturally gives them a little bit of an advantage, and I think we’d have been challenging for more at the end if we didn’t have such bad luck at a couple of the rounds.
“It’s been a good year though, and I’m hoping to come back to the Supercup and fight for the win next year, and maybe feature in GT3 as well.”
