Maxi Götz and Kevin Tse didn’t get flustered in the mixed conditions to cruise to a crushing British GT Championship victory at Oulton Park for 2 Seas Motorsport, but the story of the day was a charge by Luke Garlick and Johnny Ip from 14th to 3rd in the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX.

OULTON PARK: ENTRY LIST | TIMETABLE | PREVIEW | PRACTICE REPORT | QUALIFYING REPORT | LIVESTREAM | RACE ONE REPORT

GT4 proved a much calmer affair as Jack Brown and Marc Warren extended their championship lead with a comfortable victory in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura.

GT3

Sometimes the weather gods like to throw in a bit of chaos to proceedings, and the final race of the day at Oulton Park proved to be a textbook example of trying to predict what was going to happen next. 

Starting on a wet circuit after rain earlier in the afternoon, the track started to dry up pretty quickly as the water-shifting abilities of 14 GT3 cars became apparent with the dry line rapidly emerging. 

With the rain that was falling slightly on the grid also stopping, there was a question as to whether it was better to box for slicks or trust the starting Pro drivers to be able to manage their wets on a circuit that was burning them up. 

Electing to dive in early were Hugo Cook and Sandy Mitchell in both Barwell Motorsport Lamborghinis, Marvin Kirchhöfer in the Optimum McLaren 720S GT3 and – a few laps later – Kiern Jewiss in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes that was leading the championship heading into today’s pair of races. 

Initially, it seemed as though that was a masterstroke. Lapping a good couple of seconds faster than the cars still on wets, they were looking good for moving up the field, but then lady luck intervened again. 

With about 10 minutes gone, the rain started falling again – incidentally exactly when Jewiss decided to pit – and it came down heavy. Jewiss ran wide at the Brittens chicane, and Mitchell’s times started slipping to such an extent that he elected to pit again to go back onto wets. 

At the front, there was a swan-like calmness for Götz, an old hand at dealing with mixed weather conditions, and he was leading by a handy margin over fellow German Sven Muller who was doing well in the Team Parker Racing Porsche, but not able to extract quite as much as Götz was getting from his Mercedes-AMG GT3. 

There was calmness generally at the front, as Jonny Adam was running third in the Blackthorn Aston Martin Vantage almost half-a-dozen seconds behind Muller, with Marcus Clutton 2.6sec back in fourth in the Orange Racing by JMH McLaren. 

It remained calm until the mandatory pitstop with the field faced with two stark choices – go for slicks and hope your Am driver can manage the few odd wet patches still remaining, or play it safe on wets and hope they don’t get burnt out. 

Tse, taking over from Götz went for slicks, Muller’s co-driver Nick Jones and Clutton’s Am team-mate Simon Orange both went for wets. 

With no more rain coming, it proved to be an utter domination for Tse, who played it cool and won by 47.003sec in what was an utterly un-noteworthy second-half of the race for a driver who is rapidly becoming a very safe pair of hands – a quality a lot of teams are looking for in a bronze driver.

Taking a leisurely drive round Oulton Park was the name of the game for Tse, but behind an almighty bun fight was starting for who would join him on the podium.

Initially, it was Jones who took second but his Porsche 911 GT3 R was looking very twitchy and Orange was hacking chunks off his lead on every lap. Like a wild animal stalking its prey, it seemed like a question of when rather than if Orange would snatch away second and with 14 minutes remaining, he made the move round Island Bend as Jones dabbed the brakes to keep the car stable round the fast left-hander.

With Orange in second, eyes turned backwards to see what else might unfold in a British GT race for the ages and they fell on the bright blue Honda NSX of Bridger Motorsport’s Johnny Ip. Handed the car in a strong position after team-mate Garlick powered the car up from 14th to well inside the top 10, Ip made the most of being on slicks to pick his way up the order.

First it was a double move to go from fifth to third, taking Giacomo Petrobelli’s Blackthorn Aston and then a few corners later he got better acceleration to rob Jones of third coming out of Lodge Corner.

His next target was Orange, and with a deficit of 7.5sec and four-and-a-half minutes remaining, it really was game on. Ip was flying, comfortable with exactly how much grip the NSX was giving him round every corner. Slashing down the gap on every lap, it was the penultimate lap where he made contact with Orange. 

Orange, though, is a GT Cup champion for a reason. He has harp elbows and knows exactly where to position his car to use Oulton Park’s narrow band of asphalt to his advantage. The McLaren’s mirrors were filled with Honda, but Ip couldn’t find the slightest slither of daylight in Orange’s defence. 

Coming out of Lodge and heading up Deer Leap for the final time, Ip had the acceleration but Orange had distance on his side – he took the line with a 0.190sec advantage over the Bridger racer, if the finish line was further down the straight, it would have been anyone’s game. 

Fourth went to Petrobelli and Adam, after a relatively comfortable run to the flag after they were ambushed by Ip. While fifth went to Kirchhöfer and Morgan Tillbrook, a remarkable charge up the field after sticking it out on slicks until the mandatory stop where Tillbrook got into the zone and started on a charge up the grid. Jones took sixth alongside Muller, the last of the cars on the lead lap. 

Mark Smith capped off a good week-and-a-bit – after a triple GT Cup victory at Brands Hatch – by taking seventh alongside Martin Plowman in a Paddock Motorsport McLaren that was starting to burn out its wets towards the end. 

Eighth went to Beechdean AMR, while Duncan Cameron and Matt Griffin took ninth. The best of the Barwells was race one winner Hugo Cook alongside Rob Collard – the former really struggling for grip on the slicks when the rain came again. The same could be said for Jewiss and Charles Dawson who took 11th while Mitchell and Alex Martin rounded out the GT3 finishers having made three stops during the race 

GT4

If GT3 was chaos, GT4 was relatively calm with a pretty easy one-two finish for Optimum Motorsport in a race where they just kept calm and let the race come to them, rather than chase the conditions. 

Straight away, the grid was reduced by one as the Century Motorsport entry of Ravi Ramyead and Charlie Robertson – which had a big hit into the barriers in race one – was a non-starter because of the extend of the damage from Ramyead’s shunt. 

That meant Jack Mitchell was promoted to pole in the Mahiki Racing Lotus Emira, but at the end of the first of two green flag laps he elected to dive into the pits for slicks – something his team-mate Joe Wheeler did a few laps later. 

When the Emiras pitted, that promoted Jack Brown into the lead in the #90 Optimum Artura and he built up a pretty handy over Harry George who didn’t seem too keen in trying to put in attack on his own team-mate. 

The action instead was for third, with Branden Templeton defending from Aiden Neate in the only Lotus that didn’t stop for slicks. His defence was going pretty well until he got tapped into a spin – culprit unseen by the livestream – at Old Hall, which dropped him down a handful of places.

Not much changed through the round of stops either, with Brown swapping to Marc Warren and and George swapping to Luca Hopkinson and pretty much holding station all the way to the flag .

The pair took the top two places overall, as well as the Pro-Am and Silver Cup victories respectively. Third went to the #69 Lotus of Mitchell and Steven Lake, perhaps a sign of things to come after two podium finishes in a season full of retirements. Fourth, and rounding out the Pro-Am podium was Wheeler and Ian Duggan’s #88 Emira. 

Templeton and Salkeld recovered to take fifth overall and second in Silver Cup, just ahead of Neate and Josh Miller, who took the final spot in the Silver Cup trophy-receiving places.

After two one-hour sprints, the format for the next round changes again with the annual trip to Spa-Francorchamps treating the field – and the returning GT4 Endurance Cup entries – to a three-hour race on June 21/22.