Jake Giddings is hoping to return to the British GT at the penultimate round of Brands Hatch, after making his second outing of the season at the series’ international double-header at Spa-Francorchamps last week.
Making his first appearance of 2017 at Snetterton alongside Michael Caine in the #36 Ginetta, 2014 GT4 champion Giddings clambered into the sister #63 Autoaid/RCIB Insurance Racing Ginetta G55 alongside Matt Chapman at Spa last weekend.
Despite being shuffled down to 18th in GT4 after first-lap contact in the opening race, a strong recovery drive saw Giddings and Chapman battle into a hard-fought 10th place category finish, with the former pleased at how the car performed overall.
“To be honest the car felt good,” Giddings commented.
“We changed the set-up a couple of times in free practice and then just missed out in quali – it just didn’t work out for us for some reason.
“Our race pace was good, what we thought it would be, and we really looked forward to race two after coming through pretty well in the first one after the contact.”
However, Giddings’ momentum heading into race 2 was curtailed by a wheel issue discovered after race 1, with the #63 Ginetta unable to take the start in a frustrating end to the former champion’s second GT4 excursion of the season.
“On the cool down lap from the first race one of the wheels snapped off, we were lucky it didn’t happen a couple of laps earlier at Eau Rouge or somewhere – that would have been a biggie.
“The team fixed it for the last race but then we saw two stubs were off on another wheel. I wanted to race but, in the end, it was safer to park it and prevent the possibility of a big accident.”
Having only been signed up by the Team HARD-run team to compete at the Belgian round, Giddings is hopeful a deal can be reached with the team to partner Chapman again at the upcoming two-hour event at Brands Hatch next month.
“There’s nothing planned at the minute for the next round, it was good working with Matt and I think we make quite a good pairing.
“He’s a quick and consistent driver and we gelled well, so we’ll have to see what unravels and see if I’m back in the car for Brands.”
