Tom Oliphant feels he and the Century Motorsport team made a step up in performance at Donington Park this past weekend, with them securing their first Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup victory of the season.
Oliphant returned to the scene of his maiden Supercup victory twelve months ago in confident mood having taken a trio of top four finishes at the Brands Hatch opener two weeks previous, and his meeting started well with the third fastest time in pre-event testing.
Narrowly missing out on a front row start in qualifying, Oliphant quickly moved up a place to second at the start of the race one. Biding his time from then, the 24 year old went on to grab the race lead four laps from the end for his third career Supercup victory.
That result gave him pole position for race two, however some robust moves from rivals in the early stages left him fighting back from fifth to an eventual third place finish – a result he almost matched in the final race with another battling performance to fourth.
“It’s been a really good weekend, we had fantastic pace in practice, qualifying and all three races, which comes down to some hard work from the team,” said Oliphant.
“I was disappointed not to get on the podium for a third time as we had the pace to, but we’ve definitely picked up the pace considerably from Brands Hatch.”
Oliphant is the only driver in the Supercup to have finished in the top four in each of the first six races so far, and he hopes to build on his positive start to the season at Thruxton next time out.
“We’re making constant improvements at the moment and hopefully that will continue next time out,” he added. “Thruxton is a one-off circuit, it’s one that I really like, so hopefully we can be racy there and challenge for the race victories.”
