British GT Snetterton: Barwell & 2 Seas top the times in calm Saturday practice

Uncharacteristically for the British GT Championship, Saturday’s two practice sessions at Snetterton passed with little incident as Barwell Motorsport & 2 Seas Motorsport shared the top spots ahead of Sunday’s two one-hour races.

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In GT4, calmness also prevailed as championship leaders Zac Meakin & Jack Brown finished the two sessions first and second in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura – Gordie Mutch snatching top spot in Pre-Qualifying in his Mahiki Racing Lotus Emira.

Free Practice

As tradition dictates for a British summer, the first session of the weekend was a damp affair, meaning the first 30 minutes or so of Snetterton’s opening practice session was a case of teams bedding in brakes and making sure the cars were running properly in a session that isn’t indicative of what the forecast suggests will be a dry weekend from here on out.

That will demonstrate why Hugo Cook’s early effort of a 1m57.576sec in the J&S Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo2 stood for so long, and indeed it was only when the session was already half over did things start to finally speed up.

Headed by Marcus Clutton in the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3, times quickly dropped into the low 1m50s and then into the 1m40s as he, Martin Plowman (also in a McLaren 720S) and Josh Rowledge were the first to put the hammer down as a drying line started to emerge – with the latter two trading positions for a time as Rowledge got into a groove in the Blackthorn Aston Martin Vantage.

Times continued to tumble into the final 20 minutes, with the second Blackthorn Aston pedalled by Jonny Adam jumping into the top five, alongside Sam Neary, who got right at home back in the Team ABBA Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 by pushing up into second.

However, times were still to drop and Sandy Mitchell, a man not to waste an opportunity to set the timing screens alight, went up to the top spot in the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 with what proved to be an unbeatable 1m46.108sec. Leaving it late, Phil Keen powered the 2 Seas Motorsport AMG up to second with a time just 0.079sec slower.

They were both a full second ahead of Neary’s best time, with Adam a further 0.037sec back in fourth – the pair both handing over to their respective Ams, Richard Neary & Giacomo Petrobelli, for the closing minutes of the session.

Having run at the top at the start, it took until the closing stages for the second Barwell entry of Rob & Ricky Collard to move back into the top five at the expense of Lewis Plato, in the fastest of the BMWs alongside Carl Cavers.

In GT4, it was the same sort of approach to the session, as no one particularly looked to hit things too hard but initially it was Jordan Albert in the Steller Motorsport Audi who was putting in a few laps at the start to get the feel for the R8 LMS GT4 again – having skipped the Spa trip – and he was heading the Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 as well as Dan Vaughan’s Toyota Gazoo Racing UK Supra in a sign of how much variety the secondary class possesses.

As the track started to dry, it was Paddock Motorsport’s Matt Cowley who pushed his way up to the top of the times in his Mercedes-AMG GT4 but things were to keep changing and ultimately less than half-a-second separated the top five.

Headed by Jack Brown – who tends to be a pace-setter in his Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura – he was 0.268sec clear of the Forsetti Motorsport Aston Martin shared by Jamie Day & Mikey Porter, but Harry George was just 0.076sec down in the RAM Racing Mercedes, with Matt Nicoll-Jones only 0.131sec behind him in an Academy Motorsport Ford Mustang which is sporting a new livery this weekend – Liqui Moly now much more prominent on the American muscle car.

Cowley’s time from earlier allowed he and Ed McDermott to stay within the top five, and fastest of the Pro-Am cars.

Pre-Qualifying

With weather drying, but the track still low in grip – partly due to the recent British Superbikes meeting – it was another pretty calm session in Norfolk, as teams fine-tuned set-ups and just built up the speed slowly but surely as more Pirelli rubber got laid down and made sure they had banker laps in, just in case qualifying got cancelled.

Early doors, it was the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghinis that headed things with Mitchell once again topping the times with Ricky Collard biting at his heels just behind.

Indeed, there wasn’t too much movement except for Maxi Götz – making his Snetterton debut in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 – quickly getting himself up to speed and setting what was a then fastest time of 1m46.725sec to make what was probably the most significant bit of action through the first half of the hour-long session – did we tell you it’s been a relatively calm morning?

The flurry of action you come to expect in British GT did come, but relatively close to the end and in a bit of a ‘diet’ variety. The biggest troubling of the standings came from Götz’s teammate Phil Keen, who put in a 1m46.343sec to shuffle the D2-liveried AMG he shares with Ian Loggie up to the top of the times.

Not to be relegated too far down the order, Mitchell and Ricky Collard powered back up to take second and third respectively with Götz and co-driver Kevin Tse taking fourth in the end – despite the latter having what he described as a ‘low-speed spin’ coming out of the long-left at Palmers.

Sam Neary ensured there were two father/son duos in the top five as he logged a time just 0.410sec off Keen’s benchmark in his Abba Racing Mercedes he shares with dad Richard, while Clutton – who had been running third for a time – was shuffled down to sixth, 0.255sec clear of Max Hesse, who is replacing Raffaele Marciello this weekend alongside John Ferguson in the RAM Racing BMW M4 GT3.

While the times weren’t exactly coming in thick and fast, they were very close. The top nine were within 0.854sec with Tom Gamble – in the Optimum McLaren – just 0.043sec off Hesse’s best effort, and Garage 59’s Adam Smalley a further 0.058sec in deficit. Jonny Adam rounded out the top 10, 0.930sec behind in the Blackthorn Vantage.

At what is pretty much its spiritual home, it was fitting that it was a Lotus topping things in GT4. From the start of the session, Gordie Mutch was looking brisk in the Mahiki Racing Emira and was the early pace-setter before being relegated down by championship leaders Jack Brown & Zac Meakin.

That’s where things stayed for the longest of times, and it was within the final five minutes that Mutch wound things up again and put the blue machine back on top with what a remarkable 1m55.757sec – made more remarkable by the fact that it was a whole 0.403sec quicker than the previous best by the Optimum pairing.

Things were as close as you’d expect behind, with Porter 0.170sec off second in his Forsetti Vantage, and Albert a tenth off in the Steller Audi. What became really tight was the fact that fifth, sixth and seventh were separated by 0.020sec as Aston Millar – in the DTO Motorsport Ginetta G56 being supported by 24/7 Motorsport this weekend – had just 0.015sec on Matt Cowley, who had 0.005sec on Harry George – the latter two Mercedes-AMGs really on form around Snetterton.

Qualifying gets underway at 4.10pm UK time.