Jonny Adam left it to the dying minutes of the session but he had enough time to snatch the top spot in the TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage GT3 as the British GT Championship got into full swing at Silverstone.
At the beginning of this 50 minute session, Phil Keen was an initial mover in the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 – a sign of good things for qualifying – with a 2:02.012 to keep Rob Bell’s Black Bull Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 650S in second place with a 2:02.203.
Again traffic was playing a big part in the session and with everyone in GT3 still working out the best way to dispense of the super-sized GT4 grid meaning times probably didn’t change as much as they would have if we still had the smaller field of British GT regulars.
Speaking of GT4, Jake Giddings was reprising his role as early doors pace-setter with a 2:14.220 giving the 33 other GT4 cars something to aim at as they sought to negotiate Silverstone without issue. Nipping at his heels was Luca Anselmi in the Villorba Corse Maserati Trofeo MC GT4 who had the lead in the GT4 Euro portion of the field and was only a tenth back from the overall GT4 lead.
The most movement though, was to be found in the top GT3 class as Ross Gunn in the #1 Beechdean AMR Aston Martin decided to log a few fast laps which saw him first move to fifth and then to third in class as the track continued to rubber in on what is a warm but overcast day in Oxfordshire.
However, some late shuffling of the pack meant that Gunn’s firing up to third place was negated with both Joe Osborne’s AmDTuning.com BMW Z4 GT3 and Adam Carroll’s FF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 moving ahead of the Beechdean car into third and fourth respectively.
None though, had an answer for Jonny Adam and his 2:01.330 was by far the fastest time set all day and saw him finish three-tenths ahead of Callum MacLeod’s Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3 – making a one-off appearance this weekend to complement the sister Parfitt/Morris Bentley.
Matthew George kept up the Generation AMR pace with top spot in GT4 (Credit: Nick Smith/TheImageTeam.com)
Indeed GT4 had some movers and shakers as well with Generation AMR SuperRacing’s Matthew George mounting a charge late into the last quarter of the session himself as he set a 2:13.603 to finish four-tenths clear of Ciaran Haggerty in the Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 570S GT4.
The McLaren itself had a handy gap of a couple of tenths over Kieran Griffin who couldn’t improve on Giddings’ early time to move up any higher.
They need to watch out though, as the GT4 European Series competitors made their presence felt. Finishing first in their class, and fourth overall in GT4, was Mauro Calamia in the Swiss Team Maserati with a 2:14.395 squeezing Jordan Albert’s Beechdean AMR GT4 down into fifth by 0.03s.
Notably elsewhere, championship leaders Mike Robinson and Graham Johnson finished their session seventh in British GT GT4 perhaps suggesting that the Ginetta G55 GT4s might not be best suited to Silverstone’s long straights..
