Bradley Smith stormed to a maiden Michelin Ginetta GT4 Supercup victory in a dramatic closing round of the Croft weekend.
Smith overhauled early race leader Reece Somerfield to take the win in a race which saw championship leader Carl Breeze retire and title contender Tom Oliphant fight back from the back of the field to the podium.
Somerfield stormed into the lead off the line ahead of reverse grid pole-sitter Michael Caine, and the privateer built up a gap of over five seconds at one stage as he pursued a second win of the campaign.
His efforts were aided by a five car scrap for second place, with Caine the cork in the bottle in the early stages. Tom Wrigley was his main pursuer for the first five laps until Smith passed him at the hairpin, having dispatched Ollie Jackson with a repeat move two laps earlier.
A sublime move around the outside of Caine into the complex on lap seven gave Smith second, and from then he was able to stretch his legs. With Somerfield struggling with tyre wear, Smith was able to close the gap in just three laps before taking the lead into Tower on lap eleven.
From there, the Mectech Motorsport ace streaked clear to take his first win by over six seconds, a hugely impressive feat having started eighth. Somerfield meanwhile was left to be hunted down by a fired up Oliphant, who had won the two previous races of the weekend.
A mysterious engine cut out on the opening lap had left the Century Motorsport man over nine seconds adrift of the back of the field, but from there he showed his stunning pace to scythe his way through the field into third – with Somerfield just edging him out for second by 0.043s at the flag.
With his HHC Motorsport team-mates Breeze and Will Burns both stranded at the side of the track over the course of the race with broken driveshaft’s, Jamie Orton was able to gain some ground in the championship with a fourth place finish.
Wrigley took fifth to complete a top six hat-trick for the weekend, his best outing of the season so far, while Jackson followed him home in seventh after recovering from a spin whilst challenging Orton mid-race.
In the AM class meanwhile, Osamu Kawashima completed a hat-trick of wins for the weekend to move into the championship lead in the absence of Colin White, with his only challenger Fraser Robertson having fallen back with a spin.
Full race results can be found here.
