Optimum Motorsport and Team Abba Racing shook off the winter rust and topped the opening pair of British GT Championship practice sessions in a steady start to the 2025 season. 

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There was shared honours in GT4, with Seb Morris finishing first in the opening session for Team Parker Racing but the Mahiki Racing Lotuses are looking the strongest ahead of qualifying as the yellow and black machines finished one-two in Pre-Qualifying.

Free Practice

Morgan Tillbrook blew the cobwebs of a long winter well and truly off as he set the fastest time in the first practice session of the year under blue skies and strong winds in the East Midlands.

Tillbrook, joining Optimum from his own Enduro Motorsport outfit for this season, was one of the first out on track and it took all of five minutes for him to set the session’s benchmark time of a 1m25.107sec. 

With teams shaking down cars and mixing between qualifying and race runs, his time wasn’t particularly troubled for a good period. Hugo Cook, in the Barwell Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 was closest at the halfway mark of the 60-minute session but even then he was 0.341sec off the pace. 

Underlining the uneventful and calm nature of the session, there were no real incidents apart from a minor touch in the pits between one of the Barwell Lamborghinis and the Blackthorn Aston Martin Vantage which caused no significant damage to either machine.

Come the closing minutes, and there was a bit of a flurry of activity as a number of the Pros elected to jump into the GT3s and set a couple of quick times. That allowed Sandy Mitchell, in the #78 Barwell Huracán, to light up the timing screens and make up for lost time – having lost some running early on with a cracked brake disc. 

Even with the Scot’s impressive speed, he couldn’t overhaul Tillbrook and finished 0.050sec down. Second was only confirmed at the flag as Callum Macleod quickly unlocked the pace in his new McLaren 720S GT3 but ended 0.042sec short of overhauling Mitchell. A sign of things to come, though, with a top three split by 0.092sec.

Behind, the whole field was only covered by 1.2sec – which will certainly bring some entertainment come this afternoon’s qualifying. Fourth, and quarter-of-a-second down on Macleod, was Cook and teammate Matt Topham. 

Sven Müller made his British racing debut in the Team Parker Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R and – understandably considering his quality – he hauled the car he shares with Nick Jones into fifth, 0.004sec off fourth but 0.056sec ahead of Jonny Adam, fighting for a fifth title in the Blackthorn Aston. 

Orange Racing with JMH channeled its GT Cup experience from Donington last weekend into a solid seventh. Speaking of solid, Charles Dawson made a good start to life in GT3 racing as he set the eighth fastest time in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 – a blink of an eye ahead of the Mercedes of Richard & Samy Neary. 

Yet another Mercedes rounded out the top 10, and it was the second 2 Seas entry of Kevin Tse and Maxi Götz. 

GT4 was a case of an early flying lap proving untouchable, and it was a former GT3 champion who set it as Seb Morris stepped into the Team Parker Mercedes-AMG GT4 and put in a 1m32.423sec.

His closest competition proved to be the Mahiki Racing Lotus Emira GT4s as Josh Miller and then Jack Mitchell took swings at toppling Morris’s time but ended up 0.212sec and three-tenths off the pace respectively.

The top four was book-ended by another Team Parker Mercedes as Phil Keen – also stepping across from GT3 – and Jon Currie put in a productive session. 

Jack Brown rounded out the top five in a McLaren Artura he’s sharing with an Am teammate for the first time, as he powered the Optimum car to a time just under a second off the fastest time. 

Pre-Qualifying

If Free Practice was a picture of serenity, Pre-Qualifying was on the slightly more chaotic side of things as two red flags – to recover McLarens in the Hollywood and Coppice gravel traps – disrupted running to an extent, but didn’t stop Sam Neary from powering his Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 to the top of the times. 

Early on, it was Macleod in the Optimum McLaren who put in the quick laps, but Neary was always there or thereabouts with his early effort just 0.102sec shy of Macleod’s green machine. Despite personal bests popping up, there was no chance for an improvement as first a full course yellow and then, realising he was too deep into the gravel trap for it to be safe, a red flag was called for to recover Mark Smith’s Paddock McLaren out of the Hollywood gravel. 

Back running, it was a relatively quiet middle part of the session apart from Luke Garlick demonstrating a decent turn of speed in the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX GT3, with a time that put the blue machine up to sixth for a time before ultimately slipping back slightly to 11th – only 0.770sec off the fastest time and a hint that qualifying could be a close-run affair. 

After a final red flag, to recover Macleod’s co-driver Mike Price from Coppice, the pace ramped up at the end as drivers looked to set banker times that could be used to set the grid in the rare event that qualifying gets cancelled. 

Making the first move was Götz, with his 1m25.422sec seemingly enough to finish the session fastest, but he didn’t count for Neary in an Abba car that is significantly less green than previous campaigns. Sam’s best lap lowered the benchmark by 0.049sec and – combined with Sandy Mitchell’s improved effort – meant that the top three was covered by only 0.072sec.

Fourth went to Jonny Adam in the Blackthorn Aston, just ahead of Dawson who put in another good stint in the #42 2 Seas Mercedes to take fifth – ahead of a late charge by Marvin Kirchhöfer in the Optimum Motorsport McLaren he shares with Morgan Tillbrook.

GT4 showed the strength of the Mahiki Racing Lotus Emiras as Jack Mitchell – a former champ in British GT4 of course – powered the #69 bumblebee-esque machine onto the top of the times just 0.025sec ahead of of Josh Miller in the sister #84. 

It wasn’t always a Lotus-fest, as Jack Brown in the #90 Optimum McLaren Artura set the pace early on, and then Phil Keen also took a turn at the front. They couldn’t improve late-on though and finished fourth and third respectively. 

Charlie Robertson added a bit of extra variety to the top five in the class as he put his Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 Evo into fifth, just a tenth off the pace. 

Qualifying gets underway at 15.50 UK time.