Hugo Cook took his first British GT Championship victory as he survived 20 minutes of pressure from Maxi Götz to take victory for Barwell Motorsport alongside Rob Collard in the first race of the day at Oulton Park.

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GT4 proved to be a race of attrition, with Optimum Motorsport’s Jack Brown and Marc Warren taking the win in a class that saw just four cars finish on the same lap, while a fifth was 10 laps down. 

GT3

There was flashbacks of the British Touring Car Championship at the start of the race as Collard, starting the Barwell Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2, gave Giacomo Petrobelli – his front-row compatriot in the Blackthorn Aston Martin Vantage a solid shove going round Old Hall. Unwilling to give Petrobelli any space on the outside, Collard kept to his line – the resulting contact saw the Aston’s mirror pirouetting into the sky and the Italian relegated to second place.

Bigger damage was to come behind as Andrew Howard, also looking for space in his Beechdeam Aston, made contact with another car and got a rear-right puncture. Having to wait on the Fosters link run-off, he lost two laps and effectively had his race finished before it had chance to even begin.

Further ahead, and on the move, was Johnny Ip in the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX who climbed from 11th to eighth on the first lap. 

But right at the front, Collard was sitting comfortably at the front despite pressure from Petrobelli who was pretty happily stuck around half-a-second off the back of the black Lamborghini. The Aston man was able to attack Collard pretty freely as he was facing no real pressure from behind – Kevin Tse was lying third in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 but wasn’t quite able to really turn the screw on the pair ahead. 

Fourth, for a time, was Simon Orange and he was doing a great job to try and keep touch with the top three in a McLaren that – up-and-down the grid – is struggling to make an impact at Oulton Park this weekend. He was doing well to stay within striking distance whilst fending off Charles Dawson in the second of the 2 Seas cars. It was looking solid until 15 minutes in. Orange lost pace slightly going through Lodge corner and that gave Dawson a very optimistic chance of lunging up the inside coming into Old Hall.

He was perhaps a touch too far back and as Orange swept across to the apex, Dawson tipped the McLaren into a spin, dropping Orange to the back of the GT3 field. Dawson was slapped with a 10-second time penalty for the clumsy move.

There wasn’t much chance for any more action, as a near 20-minute full course yellow / safety car was called for with just over 22 minutes completed. That was because Ravi Ramyead, who had been leading a captivating battle in GT4 which we’ll talk about more below, dipped a tyre onto the grass leaving space for the GT3 leaders to overtake him and spun into the barriers at the Shell Oils hairpin. 

The interruption overlapped the mandatory pit window, minimising the  jeopardy of the teams needing to make perfect stops. 

Barrier damage normally leads to lengthy repairs at Oulton Park, but this time the damage to the barriers was clearly just minor and was 21 minutes of the race left, the green flag came out and the action resumed.

Cook made a great start and Götz – jumping up to second through the stops thanks to slick work and actually benefiting for success seconds for others – was left wondering where he’d find a gap to make a move. 

Lap after lap, Cook was using every inch of his Lamborghini to make the already narrow Oulton Park circuit even narrower, not giving his German rival any opportunities to try and snatch away the lead. Even while duelling through traffic, the pair were making no mistakes and in fact Cook was benefitting from catching some of the GT4s at just the right time to give himself a a slight bit of breathing space.

Despite Götz looming large, Cook wasn’t distracted and he took his first British GT win in fine style, with Götz and Tse taking second. Jonny Adam put in a flying performance in the final seven-or-so minutes to close in on the lead pair, but didn’t give himself enough time to try and make a move, instead he finished third in the Vantage he took over from Petrobelli. 

Father-and-son duo Richard & Sam Neary proved to be in just the right place to benefit from success penalties in the stops to take third in their Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 – Sam making defending from a hard-charging Sandy Mitchell look easy as they battled for fourth and fifth.

Behind Mitchell’s Barwell Huracán, and really unlucky not to get more, was Sven Muller. In his first race at Oulton Park, the Team Parker Racing driver set a new lap record in the Porsche 911 GT3 R but found the narrow circuit wasn’t conducive to overtaking and thus was stuck in sixth – still a great result alongside Nick Jones, though. 

Seventh was Duncan Cameron and Matt Griffin in the Spirit of Race Ferrari, while Optimum Motorsport’s Marvin Kirchhöfer and Morgan Tillbrook finished best of the McLaren 720S GT3s in eighth – despite a spin at the Brittens chicane for Tillbrook. 

After their time penalty, Dawson and Kiern Jewiss took ninth for 2 Seas, while the second Optimum entry for Callum Macleod and Mike Price rounded out the top 10. 

GT4

GT4 was a case of what might have been for joint championship leaders Ravi Ramyead and Charlie Robertson. At the start, Ramyead got a brilliant opening lap to jump three places up into the lead in his Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 Evo, with pressure coming – for a lap – from Josh Miller’s Mahiki Lotus. 

We said it didn’t last long, and that’s because on just the second lap, the Emira continued its run of mechanical woes by having a suspected gearbox failure. 

That allowed Luca Hopkinson to capitalise on a relatively quick start in the Optimum Mclaren Artura and get right on the back of Ramyead. Despite Hopkinson being a Silver-rated driver, compared to the BMW racer’s Bronze rating, Ramyead was doing a fine job of parrying Hopkinson’s thrusts and was set relatively pretty. 

For a time, the pair were by themselves, but as the attacks and defences were coming in, Marc Warren managed to close up and add a bit of extra Optimum power to the lead fight. 

But the excitement couldn’t last. As he gave space to let the squabbling GT3s through, Ramyead gave too much space and found himself on the dirty side of the track, and then onto the grass. Devoid of grip, he spun across the track and hit the barriers on the outside of the Shell Oils hairpin hard. 

 

 While the team is going to do its best to get the car out for the second race, which starts at 3.50pm local time, there is a suggestion that the crash has damaged the BMW’s chassis which would mean it’s race weekend over. 

With championship leaders gone, the focus shifted to Warren and Jack Brown, who were handed a great chance to become sole leaders leaving the weekend. 

And indeed, they cruised to victory – helped no end by Harry George, who took over the second Artura from Hopkinson. George was second and fending off Jack Mitchell in the only Mahiki Lotus that wasn’t experiencing some sort of issue. The pair were battling fiercely, allowing Brown to creep off up the road. 

Mitchell only gained second in the closing minutes, when George was slapped with a drive-through for multiple track limits violations. By the time the Emira finally got to experience a clear track, Brown was too far up the road to be caught.

The drive-through penalty for George benefitted Chris Salkeld and Branden Templeton. The duo, racing the second Century Motorsport BMW, hadn’t featured at all in the race but were close enough to sweep through into third in class and victory in GT4 Silver Cup with George and Hopkinson fourth, second in Silver Cup.

The only other GT4 running at the chequered flag – in what is a weak weekend for the secondary class – was Ian Duggan and Joe Wheeler in the #88 Lotus. Issues around half-way, though, meant there were 10 laps down on the competition.

The second race gets underway at 3.50pm local time, and remember you can watch it live on GT REPORT. Just scroll up to the top of the report and click the LIVE STREAM link.