British GT Brands Hatch: Mitchell fastest in pre-quali, Abba paces Free Practice

Title contender Sandy Mitchell proved why he’s already a British GT champion as he set the fastest time in Pre-Qualifying to set up the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini for what could well be a crucial qualifying session. In the morning Free Practice session, Sam Neary reminded everyone that Team Abba Racing could be ones to watch for a race win as he paced the first session of the day at Brands Hatch.

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In GT4, Zac Meakin and Jack Brown started their title hunt in ideal fashion as they paced both 60-minute sessions in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura, as the Mahiki Racing Lotuses also proved to be rapid in the Kent sunshine.

Free Practice

The seemingly constant rain that battered much of England leading up to the Battle of Brands finally relented and was replaced with what was quite a pleasant morning in Kent as sunshine beat down on the circuit.

That said, with the amount of trees lining the Grand Prix Loop – which is rarely used outside of race weekends – there was still work to be done in terms of rubbering up and carving out a dry line out before times could really start to drop.

In the early stages, it was teams running McLarens that seemed to be dealing with the conditions best as Morgan Tillbrook – in the Garage 59 720S GT3 Evo – found himself ahead of Tom Gamble’s Optimum Motorsport McLaren and Josh Caygill’s Team RJN example.

As the track dried out, there wasn’t a rapid change around in times, but one mover was championship contender Ricky Collard powering his Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 up towards the sharp-end as a quarter of the session ticked to completion.

With titles on the line, this session was pretty much a case of getting the car dialled in for race runs and set-up, with lunchtime’s Pre-Qualifying session possibly where the stopwatch will really get troubled.

With that in mind, the fastest time in the session was only replaced with just 12 minutes of the session remaining as Benji Goethe – joining Orange Racing by JMH this weekend – powered his way to the top with a 1m24.091sec. His benchmark seemed to fire up some competition for the fastest time, as Marcus Clutton – sharing a McLaren with Tillbrook – knocked half-a-tenth off the best time.

His effort was quickly obliterated by Sam Neary, always a fan of Brands Hatch in the Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, who broke into the 1m23s with a 1m23.832sec. Joining him in that bracket was Sandy Mitchell, a title contender himself in the second Barwell Lamborghini, who was 0.120sec down.

Clutton and Tillbrook ended the session in third with Goethe’s time best for fourth alongside Simon Orange.

Fifth went to Gamble and co-driver Mark Radcliffe, with the final GT3 title battlers – Adam Smalley & Shaun Balfe – in sixth and capping a strong opening session for McLaren squads. Ricky & Rob Collard took seventh.

GT4 proved to be an ever-changing feast as McLarens, Ginettas, Aston Martins and Lotuses all put themselves towards the sharp-end of the field.

Early on, it was two of the championship contenders nose-to-tail as Zac Meakin, in the Optimum McLaren Artura, headed Jamie Day’s Forsetti Aston Martin Vantage but Gordie Mutch and Nathan Harrison – in the Mahiki Racing Lotus Emiras – both started to turn up the wick in the blue machines and started to trade times that quickly descended down into the 1m31s. Throw in Aston Millar and Freddie Tomlinson too in the DTO Motorsport Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo and there was an intriguing battle unfolding.

First Mutch unseated Meakin, and then Harrison sped ahead to claim the team glory but Jack Brown, who took over from Meakin, was eager to start their weekend as strongly as possible and towards the end of the first hour of running at Brands Hatch he lowered the best tine to 1m31.187sec.

No one was able to respond to that challenge as Stephen Lake, Harrison’s co-driver, stayed in second with just over a tenth in hand over Jamie Day, who’s been sharing the Forsetti machine with Mikey Porter. Fourth went to Mutch, with the Ginetta running in fifth.

There was another championship contender in sixth as Charles Dawson and Seb Morris powered their Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4 up to third in Pro-Am, despite sitting out the first 10 or so minutes of the session before finally coming out onto track.

Pre-Qualifying

Sandy Mitchell proved why he’s already a British GT champion and gunning for another title as he powered to the top of times within the opening 10 minutes of Pre-Qualifying and set a time that no one else could beat.

His 1m23.503sec in the Barwell Lamborghini was the perfect grasping of an opportunity to get some additional qualifying practice over and above a key championship rival as the sister Huracán of the Collards missed the entire session with what team boss Mark Lemmer described as a ‘€10 part failure’ in a brand-new engine fitted this week. The oil leak necessitated lengthy works which saw the car miss the entire running.

With mixed fortunes for the Lamborghinis, it was McLarens once again which set the pace behind with Tom Gamble striking late in the session to jump up into second and just 0.043sec off Mitchell’s pace.

Despite it being more than a decade since he raced around Brands Hatch, Alex Buncombe was close to besting the fastest time in his RJN McLaren but a dip off track at turn three led to a track limits penalty and a lap that would have been a tenth quicker than anyone was consigned to what might have been. His string of fast laps building up to that ultimately deleted effort put him third – exactly 0.001sec quicker than 2 Seas Motorsport’s Maxi Götz in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

Even though he ended the session in fifth, Free Practice pace-setter Sam Neary finished Pre-Quali just 0.155sec off the top spot in an early indication of just how close qualifying will be later on.

Callum Macleod book-ended a triple set of Mercedes-AMG GT3s in his Greystone GT example, a tenth ahead of Smalley and Balfe in the title outsider Garage 59 McLaren. Their sister McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Morgan Tillbrook & Marcus Clutton was eighth.

Rounding out the field was Hugo Cook & Sacha Kakad’s J&S Racing Audi R8 LMS Evo2, while Tom Wood demonstrated how he’s hit the ground running as he rounded out the top 10 on his GT3 debut in the Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage he’s sharing with the ultra-experienced Andrew Howard.

Zac Meakin and Jack Brown maintained their blistering start to the final weekend of 2024 as they headed GT4 but the thinnest of margins as Brown’s multiple improvements in the Artura gave them a 1m30.782sec – the fastest lap of the day so far and 0.058sec quicker than Gordie Mutch, who was flying late on in the Mahiki Racing Lotus.

No one particularly headed GT4 for any great length of time as Mutch swapped times with Meakin and Sai Sanjay – the latter showing a great burst of pace in the RACE LAB McLaren to head the times for a period of time before falling back slightly to fifth overall and third in Silver Cup alongside team-mate Callum Davies.

That’s because Aston Millar, in the DTO Ginetta, set a 1m31.188sec on his final lap of the session to jump up to third in the class – two tenths ahead of Seb Morris and Charles Dawson, who have been bang on the pace in their Team Parker Mercedes.

Outside the top five, title contenders Will Orton & Marc Warren will have some work to do to find a few extra tenths ahead of qualifying as they finished seventh in their Forsetti Aston Martin, but just 0.001sec behind Nathan Harrison and Stephen Lake’s Lotus.

Qualifying gets underway at 15.55 local time.