Optimum Motorsport’s Jack Brown has said he and Zac Meakin just need to keep their race consistent and avoid making mistakes if they’re to convert their British GT Championship pole position into victory at the Silverstone 500.
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From the very start of GT4 qualifying, the pair’s McLaren Artura was topping the times, with Brown taking top spot in his half of the session by 0.217sec before Meakin extended their advantage to 0.237sec over the CMR Ginetta. Both cars had an advantage of more than one second over the cars behind, such was their speed at the front of the field.
Brown was understated when telling GT REPORT about their session: “So, yeah for my quali it was good. It was just a case for me of putting it all together. I had a few bits to work on going into quali and I think, you know, I ended up pulling that lap together.”
Despite such a dominant display, Brown isn’t resting on his laurels and realises that anything can happen in a three-hour race with such a competitive field.
He explained the first thing the pair need to do: “Get away cleanly. Don’t do anything stupid. Stay out of trouble and the rest should just come, hopefully providing there’s no external factors. It’s a tricky race though, with the Pro-Am cars having the less time in the pits every time. That is the biggest factor here so there’ll be a lot of overtaking and I imagine, safety cars come into play.
“But, you know, we’ve just got to keep it consistent and not make any mistakes and I think we’ll get a good result out of it.”
Meakin is also well aware of the threat their rivals pose, with the Artura having different strengths compared to their nearest rivals around Silverstone.
“It’s all going good for the race weekend,” Meakin said. “We struggle a little bit on straight line speed compared to the V8s for example. The Aston, the Mustangs they’re all a bit quicker than us down the straights, but we have them around the corners, so it’ll just be a good game really, to play against. And also see how, how it unfolds, the strategies. Everyone’s got different ones, so we’ll see how that unfolds.
“We’ve got good pace in both [wet and dry], so we’ll just see how the weather unfolds. Hopefully it stays dry, that would be good. But if it’s wet, it doesn’t really matter because both me and Jack are quick, so it’s all going good.”
The Silverstone 500 gets underway at 12.30pm UK time, and you can watch the race live on GT REPORT.
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