British GT Donington: 2 Seas hang on in tense season opener

Kiern Jewiss resisted consistent pressure from Sandy Mitchell to convert pole to a fabulous British GT Championship victory alongside Charles Dawson in their 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 which has been faultless all weekend.

GT4 was a calmer affair, as Optimum Motorsport’s Marc Warren and Jack Brown elected not to fight a hard-charging Mahiki Racing Lotus Emira in the opening stint and used a well-timed safety car and shorter time in the pits to leap back to the top of the class and take an untroubled victory.

GT3

Donington was chosen as the new season opener to avoid the usual chaos that normally envelops the races at Oulton Park and that change has seemed to have been rewarded with a race that had the usual spikes of mischief but nothing as serious as what unfolds in Cheshire.

Indeed, the opening lap showcased a textbook lunge up the inside from Alex Martin – starting third in his Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2. On the run down to Redgate, Martin spotted a gap on the inside of Kevin Tse’s 2 Seas Mercedes-AMG GT3 and squeezed his way up to second.

That would be the only change of significance in the opening sequence of laps as Dawson was metronomic at the front, setting comfortable and clean lap times which allowed the advantage over Martin to breath out to over three seconds without ever feeling as though the three-pointed star was being operated on the ragged-edge.

The only proper threat in the opening hour came from the first Full Course Yellow – which became a safety car as per British GT’s rules. That was to recover the #88 Lotus Emira of Ian Duggan which was unceremoniously shunted by Giacomo Petrobelli’s Blackthorn Aston Martin, the latter clearly unsighted by the rapidly closing gap as the Mahiki racer maintained his racing line – as allowed under the rules.

That near 20-minute neutralisation bunched up the field, but when the action went green again, the new wave-by introduced by SRO allowed Dawson to power off into a clear track, undisturbed by any lapped traffic around him to throw in an unknown variable.

Come the mandatory stop, Jewiss stepped into the blue and pink machine with almost five seconds over Sandy Mitchell – aboard Martin’s Huracán – and was looking relatively happy. However, anyone who has watched any British GT racing over the last couple of years knows there’s nothing that resembles a red rag to a bull more than Mitchell being asked to chase down a gap to the leader.

By the time the final FCY was called for with 47mins to go – to re-locate a tyre stack walloped by Nick Jones after some door-banging with Optimum’s Mike Price – the Scot was within a second of Jewiss and starting to apply the pressure.

Weaving between GT4 traffic, the duo’s gap fluctuated between 0.9 and 1.5 seconds depending on who encountered slower cars where. Mitchell, though, was never put off by not making significant progress towards reducing the gap, he was happy just waiting and taking chances where he could.

That looked to pay off handsomely going into the final five minutes as the Lamborghini was 0.499sec and looming like a shark ready to move in for the kill. On the final lap, it was anyone’s guess who was going to see the chequered flag first but fortune favoured Jewiss as he was able to lap Will Burns’ Rob Boston Racing Porsche heading down the Craner Curves, whereas Mitchell had to slow and wait until after the Old Hairpin.

That was all it took, with Mitchell relegated to second by just 1.106sec.

The positions behind weren’t as tightly contested, with GT3 runners slightly more spread out than you’d perhaps expect for the first race of the season. After being relegated to third at the start, Kevin Tse and Maxi Götz didn’t make any waves in the 2 Seas AMG and rounded out the podium 10.025sec behind the squabbling duo ahead.

Stick an extra few minutes onto the end of the race mind, and things could have been different as Marvin Kirchhöfer was putting in a string of good laps in the #77 Optimum Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo and was taking chunks out of Götz’s advantage. Unfortunately for him, and co-driver Morgan Tillbrook, the end came too soon and fourth – 2.865sec down – was the end result, still good points for the championship come the end of the year.

Father-and-son racers Richard and Sam Neary almost stealthed their way to fifth, the Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 was relatively invisible throughout the race with penalties – notably for Orange Racing by JMH for an FCY infringement – and misfortune for others allowing them to creep up the grid and finish with a handy result.

One of those who had a bit of misfortune was Matt Topham and Hugo Cook in the second of the Barwell entries. Topham – racing the Lamborghini for the first time – made a good start but was caught in the wash of Nick Jones’ Team Parker Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R and had a spin at the Old Hairpin which lost them a few places.

A good recovery drive from Cook allowed them to take sixth, more than a dozen seconds ahead of the Orange Racing McLaren of Simon Orange and Marcus Clutton – the pair relegated from fifth to seventh with a drive-through for not slowing quickly enough in an FCY.

Silver-Am honours and eighth overall went to Beechdean AMR’s Andrew Howard and Tom Wood. The former spent most of his opening stint in an entertaining battle with the equally blue-and-white Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX of Johnny Ip which saw the lead for the Silver-Am sub-category swap between them.

Ninth went to Mark Smith and Martin Plowman in a quiet race for the Paddock Motorsport McLaren crew, with the top 10 rounded out by Price and Callum Macleod, who are under investigation post-race for the incident with Jones heading into the Fogarty Esses.

GT4

The secondary class was a demonstration on the fragility and speed of the Lotus Emira, the reliable speed of the McLaren Artura, and the impact of time penalties for GT4 Silver Cup crews.

On the opening lap of the race, the biggest mover proved to be Ravi Ramyead in the Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 Evo who moved up a pair of places to sit just behind Marc Warren’s quick starting Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura.

Not that he sat behind for long, as Warren belied his Am tag and was building himself a handy lead as he quickly adapted from his 2024 chariot – an Aston Martin Vantage – to the Artura and was looking pretty handy for his lead too.

While he was sitting pretty at the front, Aiden Neate – who was relegated from pole to the back after Mahiki Racing mistakenly breached parc ferme rules after qualifying – was powering his Emira up the field. Within 10 minutes of the race starting he was up to fourth and with 30 minutes ticked off he had got the better of Ramyead with a great move at the Fogarty Esses.

Ramyead tried to fight back into the Melbourne Hairpin but Neate stuck it out round the outside, which became the inside for Goddards and held onto second.

The FCY eroded Warren’s advantage and allowed Neate to battle through for GT4 lead. However, the FCY giveth and the FCY taketh away. With the field compressed, the extra 20 seconds Neate had to serve in the pits as a Silver Cup entry alongside Josh Miller meant they lost a handful of places to the Pro-Am crews.

Such was the speed of the Pros freshly aboard, Miller couldn’t pick his way back up the order and the race settled into a quiet close in which Jack Brown – having taken over from Warren demonstrated why he’s a decent favourite to take back-to-back GT4 titles as he cruised to the class win by more than a dozen seconds.

Despite a five-second time penalty for contact under the safety car, Ramyead and co-driver Charlie Robertson had more than enough of an advantage to take a comfortable second ahead of third overall, and Endurance Cup winners, Ed McDermott and Seb Morris.

Like we described Kirchhöfer’s valiant but losing chase of Götz in GT3, a few extra minutes could have cost Morris third overall as his teammate in the second Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4, Phil Keen, was closing in at a rate of knots but ran out of time to get any closer than 1.790sec behind. He and Jon Currie took third in the GT4 Pro-Am category.

While their early charge didn’t lead to an overall GT4 win, Neate and Miller did take the Silver Cup victory in a silver-lining for the Mahiki team which had a pair of retirements. The #69 Emira had an oil pressure issue while Duggan was shunted by Petrobelli and then – when the team patched it up and tried to send it back out – had a mechanical failure coming out of the pits.