Dan Cammish has once again claimed a double pole-position, the Redline Racing man a cut above at Silverstone on the simplistic National layout.
The Yorkshireman needs only to maintain his present points gap in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB by the close of the two races tomorrow afternoon in order to secure his second title, and his imperious performance today points to the reigning champion securing his second crown at the same venue as he did twelve months ago.
Tom Oliphant (Redline) and Stephen Jelley (Team Parker Racing) accompany Cammish on the front-row for the first and second encounters respectively. Oliphant will be aiming to claim his so far elusive first category podium, whilst Jelley will be pleased with a return to form after neck injuries hampered him at Knockhill. Said injuries were a legacy of his Snetterton incident that destroyed his Team Parker machine. Oliphant falls to fifth for the second race, but Jelley is a strong third on the race one grid.
Eleventh and seventh on the two grid sheets are the slots where the Porsche Scholar Charlie Eastwood is to be found. Difficult conditions slightly caught out the young star, who picked up a flat-spot on his tyres and was unable to recover. His fightback tomorrow will be a key sub-plot to the likely title success of his team-mate Cammish and indeed the Redline Racing team, who are within touching distance of the teams title. Eastwood himself is likely to claim the Rookie crown tomorrow and the lucrative £50,000 prize that comes with said success.
Dan Lloyd’s return to Porsche competition resulted in an eighth and a sixth position grid-slot. Lloyd felt he could have extracted more, but his performance this weekend has been a stand-out in such a competitive field. Dino Zamparelli and GT Marques are fifth and third on the timing-sheet but Dino needed to re-capture his Silverstone form of a year ago to halt Cammish’s title aspirations this weekend. Team-mate Alessandro Latif out-qualified his more experience team-mate with fourth for race one, but finds himself down in tenth ahead of what will likely be a tricky second race.
Lloyd’s fellow In2Racing driver Euan McKay has got both of his hands hovering above the Pro-Am1 crown. The champion elect must simply outscore his consistent challenger John McCullagh (Redline) by a solitary point across both races to claim the crown. Brother Dan McKay is second on the grid-sheet for the opening drama, the pair swapping for the second, but the In2Racing siblings are not likely to hold back on track tomorrow. Sean Hudspeth will stand well back in his Parr Motorsport car in the third, and look to pick up yet more class silverware. McCullagh is fourth in class for both races.
Peter Kyle-Henney out-qualified McCuallgh on best and second best times to head Pro-Am2 for Parr, looking an ever more accomplished Gentleman competitor. Thomas Jennings (G-Cat Racing) and Mark Radcliffe (Intersport) alternate the second and third grid slots and the Pro-Am2 fight is the only one looking likely to boil down to a final round thriller. Class leader Tautvydas Barstys found his Silverstone curse strike again, fourth a solid result but not what the Juta Racing run class leader needed with a narrow six point advantage over Kyle-Henney.
Focus will undoubtedly be on Carrera Cup GB tomorrow. The two races – televised on itv4 at 12:35pm and 04:30pm respectively – should see four champions crowned. Cammish, McKay E, Eastwood and the Redline team have all been a cut-above in their respective classes and this is reflected in the fact that they will have in all likelihood claimed their success before the final round at Brands Hatch. In such a competitive field their achievements are not to be underestimated and hopefully will get more recognition as other fights move to Kent. The Pro-Am2 battle almost certainly will come down to race sixteen and the opportunity for the Gentlemen to be the stars of the Brands show is unprecedented. Often the forgotten class, whilst they may play a support act tomorrow, their time is coming.
