Marvin Kirchhöfer and Sven Muller gave the British GT Championship a distinctly European flavour as they topped the first two practice sessions at Oulton Park for Optimum Motorsport and Team Parker Racing respectively.

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In GT4, it was Lotus domination all the way as #69 and #84 Mahiki Racing Emiras topped the two practice sessions, in what is a routine repeat of the yellow-and-black machines dominating practice and qualifying before hitting issues during the race.

Free Practice

After overnight rain left the circuit damp and greasy, the first real action at Oulton Park got off to a quiet start. With three test sessions yesterday in glorious sunshine, no one was in a particular rush to burn up sets of wet tyres that could be needed come Monday’s races with the forecast looking likely to see some rain.

Those who did go out, were doing so with the Pros in the cars only as championship leader Kiern Jewiss – in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo – traded times with Spirit of Race’s Matt Griffin, who was getting to grips with the Cheshire circuit pretty well in the Ferrari 296 GT3.

It was 20 minutes into the session that someone dared risk slicks and that brave soul was Martin Plowman, who immediately knocked more than four seconds off the previous best time as he handled the wet-in-places circuit with aplomb in his Paddock Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.

While he kept things on track, and kept setting best laps, the rest of the field was in no real hurry to follow him out as Luke Garlick proved to be his only real sparring partner as he bolted slicks onto the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX GT3 and set about chasing him down.

Plowman’s best was a 1m35.375sec towards the halfway mark, with Garlick 0.536sec back. But by this time, other teams had decided now was the time to get the engines fired up and Sandy Mitchell added his Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 to the mix and immediately went second, 0.126sec down.

That sparked a flurry of quick times as Mitchell, Barwell team-mate Hugo Cook, and Team Parker Racing’s Sven Muller started trading rapid times as the sun came out and the track started to warm up.

Cook ended up fastest with a 1m34.524sec before the first red flag of the day halted proceedings for 15 minutes as circuit staff had to recover Branden Templeton’s Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 Evo which had got itself stuck in the gravel trap at Island Bend.

The track went green again with less than 10 minutes to go and it proved to Marvin Kirchhöfer who, alongside co-driver Morgan Tillbrook, elected not to do any running in the first half of Free Practice. When he did go out, in the Optimum Motorsport McLaren, he lit up the times – his ultimate best of 1.33.571sec put him ahead of Jonny Adam’s Blackthorn Aston Martin by just 0.061sec, with Cook another 0.196sec back.

Fourth went to Callum Macleod, with Greystone GT’s Oli Webb in fifth, despite the team announcing during the session that the team were withdrawing from the rest of the weekend after the completion of two practice sessions. The Greystone McLaren is the second car not to be seen, with the Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4 of Jon Currie & Phil Keen not doing any running until Monday.

Back to the cars that are here, and GT4 proved to be – as is so often the case – a great showing for Mahiki Racing’s Lotus Emiras as the #69 of Jack Mitchell & Steven Lake pipped the #84 of Aiden Neate and Josh Miller by more than half-a-second as Mitchell got cracking in the yellow and black machines. Neate moved up to second late on, as he got more and more of a feeling for the conditions in the second car.

Jack Brown took third in the Optimum Artura, with the BMW of Ravi Ramyead and Charlie Robertson finishing in fourth – just a second back from Mitchell’s best time.

Pre-Qualifying

After a mixed start to the day, lunch-time’s Pre-Qualifying – pushed back 45 minutes because of repairs to barriers – was a warmer and brighter affair with track temperatures reaching into the 20s and showing that Spring might well be returning at Oulton Park.

Despite the better weather, there was a steady to start the afternoon’s running with Sven Muller setting the fastest time initially in his Team Parker Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R, with a 1m33.587sec to go almost half-a-second clear of Matt Griffin, with Marcus Clutton a tenth further back in the Orange Racing with JMH McLaren.

But having not really set a time in the first session, Maxi Götz was on a charge in the second as he powered the 2 Seas Mercedes-AMG GT3 he shares with Kevin Tse. His best of 1m33.186sec was the fastest lap of the day up to that point, and for quite a while it seemed as though that’s the best we’d get as things settled into a routine during the mid-session.

Not that there was chance for much running as a Full Course Yellow and then a red flag was called for to recover Giacomo Petrobelli’s Blackthorn Aston. The Italian lost it at Druids and went through the gravel and into the barriers, not too hard thankfully but enough that the car had to get delivered back to the pits and wasn’t seen out again.

20 minutes remained on the clock once things went green again, and the biggest mover was Sandy Mitchell who jumped up to fourth and then the top with a pair of cracking laps, culminating in a 1m33.044sec. It wasn’t to be the best though as Muller went out late on in the Porsche and smashed in the best time of the day by a decent margin – his 1m32.769sec was the only one in the 1m32s and was a whole 0.275sec than Mitchell.

Third went to Team Abba Racing thanks to a late lap from Sam Neary, while Götz and Tse took fourth at the flag. Fifth went to Cook and Rob Collard despite losing time in the garage with a wheel bearing issue that necessitated a driveshaft replacement too.

In GT4, it was a bit of musical chairs as first Charlie Robertson – in the #71 Century BMW – went to the top before being unseated by Aiden Neate in the #84 Mahiki Lotus, with Luca Hopkinson also throwing himself into the mix in the second of Optimum Arturas.

Come the end, and no one could unseat Neate with Hopkinson and Harry George taking second, 0.107sec on Neate’s 1m41.684sec, with Robertson in third by 0.047sec.