It was a double ram raid at Snetterton, as RAM Racing secured victory in the second Intelligent Money British GT Championship race of the day thanks to a great defensive drive from Ulysse De Pauw and John Ferguson, which secured their first overall victory.
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In GT4, it was action all the way to the end, as Jack Brown put on a great display in the Century Motorsport BMW M4 to take a hard-earned class win.
GT3
Much like the opening race, the first lap was a pretty clean affair as the field filtered itself round the quick turn one pretty much safely – the only notable incident was Marcus Clutton needing to take to the grass on the exit of the right-hander to avoid a clash.
The best move possibly came from Lewis Williamson, in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3, who squeezed his way in between the two RAM Racing Mercedes as Callum Macleod tried to squeeze up his inside to take second.
Williamson didn’t last there long unfortunately, as a right-rear puncture took him out of contention. That would have promoted Macleod to second behind team-mate De Pauw if it hadn’t been for Sandy Mitchell powering his way past in the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán.
It was pretty quiet after that, with De Pauw opening up a decent advantage, which he retained until the pitstops just after the halfway mark.
As De Pauw swapped to Ferguson, and Mitchell swapped to Adam Balon, the fight was on. The pair came out relatively close to each other, and then Balon set about slicing down his deficit by a couple of tenths every lap.
Come the final ten minutes, and Balon was within half-a-second and filling the mirrors of the Mercedes. Ferguson was a bit rough round some of the corners, not quite hitting his lines, which gave the Lamborghini racer a sniff of an opportunity every now and then – especially at the sharp-left of Agostini.
However, he could never quite get a good enough gap to make a move happen. Through the traffic too, the RAM driver had an edge and was happier to show his elbows to some of the unrulier traffic.
Coming through the long, long, right of Coram for the last time, a couple of back-markers looked to potentially scupper his run to the line, but a better punch off Murrays gave him the speed to the line to take a well-earned first British GT victory – just 0.340sec clear of Balon.
Third went to a distant Flick Haigh and Jonny Adam in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3, redemption for a race-ruining puncture in race one – a tiny piece of flint denying them victory.
Redline Racing put on a great performance to take fourth, Alex Malykhin and James Dorlin both having a really strong race as well as having the rub of the green at points to capitalise on the mistakes of others to move up and bag some good points.
Fifth on the line went to Enduro Motorsport’s Marcus Clutton and Morgan Tillbrook, but they finished under a cloud of a steward’s investigation after a coming together with fellow McLaren racer Mia Flewitt. Tillbrook was running alongside Flewitt when the latter – on the outside of the right-hander at Williams – looked to squeeze Tillbrook, who was already running to the very edge of the circuit – but came off worst as she spun off, taking the shine off what was a strong opening from her co-driver Euan Hankey.
Ian Loggie and Callum Macleod took sixth, adding points to Loggie’s championship lead, after a solid if quiet race for the pair, their early charge dented by having to serve a maximum success penalty after their morning victory.
After an early puncture, Williamson finished seventh alongside James Cottingham for 2 Seas.
GT4
Century Motorsport took a hard-earned, rare, GT4 victory after what was a great display from Will Burns and Jack Brown in their BMW M4 GT4.
At the start it was actually Sennan Fielding who made the better start, getting past race one winner Jamie Day’s R Racing Aston Martin on the opening lap, with Burns sitting in third.
The biggest change was in the pitstops, and with success penalties being served – and extra time for everyone apart from Newbridge because of the team’s Pro-Am status – the order shuffled once again.
Coming out of the mandatory stops and it was Matt Topham, in the Newbridge Aston, who took over from Darren Turner in the lead. However, his lack of experience as an Am was always going to go against him.
Jack Brown – taking over from Burns – quickly got onto the back of Topham but couldn’t really make the move stick until the final phase of the race to finally bully his way through into the lead up the inside at Agostini.
Then, in the very last laps, Matt Cowley squeezed his way through Topham’s defence in the Ford Mustang to take second – some slight reward after having a potential race one podium snatched away by an overly-robust competitor.
Topham and Turner eventually took third, and the Pro-Am victory, with Tom Edgar and Jordan Collard taking fourth – and the final podium spot in the Silver Cup category.
The next Intelligent Money British GT Championship race takes the field for a holiday in Spa, on 23 & 24 July.
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