BRITISH GT 2022
RD.2 SILVERSTONE GP
Following on from Oulton Park, it was important to build on the foundations we set down at the first round. Ahead of the round Betty and I took a trip to iZone Driver Development to work on her pace ahead of the race weekend. Silverstone is a track I love in a GT3 car and this weekend was one I was really looking forward to. We knew the car had pace from Oulton Park so this weekend should be a strong one.
As Practice got under way it became apparent that our Balance of Performance wasn’t as good as it was at Oulton, with our car now being one of the slowest in the GT3 speed traps. Regardless, the balance of the car was great and I could push seriously hard to keep our car in the GT3 pack. This time we kept the car clean throughout practice, and come Qualifying I was able to get my run in and put the car 5th in our sub-class and 10th overall in GT3 out of the 20-strong field. I feel like there was more time there but we set our pressures too high so I only got 1 lap in on the tyres before I lost the peak performance of the tyre. Regardless, I was happy with this result with our BoP but when mine and Betty’s times were combined, we were only able to end up P18 overall. Not the ideal place to start the race, but as long as betty kept the car clean and stayed out of trouble I would have my chance to let loose in the race and make some places back.
Lights out for the race and Betty avoided some chaos on lap 1 and as a result, made a few places up in her first stint before handing over to me around 40 minutes into the race. I got the chance to get my foot down around this incredible circuit. My first stint wasn’t amazing though, I had an issue with a vibration from my front left tyre that was later put down to a tyre issue. However I kept the car clean and set competitive lap times to put our car back in the mix ahead of Betty’s final stint. Betty’s stint was a little more chaotic as she got involved in a small incident with a lapping GT3 car and lost time to the cars we were battling with before. However, the car was brought back safely albeit two laps down, and then it was up to me to bring the car home. With the tyre issue resolved I was able to attack fully and chase down a car which was two laps in front of me. My times were really competitive and were matching those of the leading two cars but at the end of the race I was only able to make up one place and finish a disappointing P12. I feel as though the car had the capability to fight for a class podium but to get our first points on the board is always a positive. When comparing this to Oulton this weekend showed so much more promise and we learnt so much more about the car from this weekend. As always, the team did an exemplary job and we worked together to get the most out of the package and I feel we achieved this. We will keep pushing and work hard to get the most out of ourselves in future rounds.
As always, a massive thanks has to go out to all my amazing sponsors and my supporters. I will continue to push my hardest and keep the progress up.
