As track temperatures soared to over 50C by the end of Pre-Qualifying, it was a morning to remember for McLaren teams as Orange Racing by JMH and Optimum Motorsport shared the honours in the first two practice sessions as the British GT Championship heads overseas to Circuit Spa-Francorchamps. 

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In GT4, Mahiki Racing quickly got up to speed with its new Ginettas as Josh Miller topped Free Practice, before run-away championship leader Jack Brown helped Optimum to a class sweep with the fastest time in his Artura in Pre-Quali. 

Free Practice

On what was a hot and sunny morning in the Ardennes, the action was relatively quiet as teams got to grips with the Belgian rollercoaster once again with focus more on getting cars dialled in than going for an all-out push, that’ll come in Pre-Qualifying.

Instead, it was a flurry of fast laps early in the session that set the pace in both categories. In GT3, Callum Macleod – sharing with British GT’s super-sub Matt Topham for the weekend – went fastest first in the Optimum Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, but only seconds later Sam Neary took seven-tenths off with a 2m19.220sec in the Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. 

 

It was then Orange Racing By JMH’s Marcus Clutton who took a big chunk off as his lap, just a minute after this flurry of early action, dropped him into the 2m17s before Macleod again jumped clear. 

The last laugh would be Clutton’s as, on two consecutive laps, he lowered the fastest lap time to a 2m17.004sec which proved to be unbeatable.

His effort was helped by the fact a lot of teams were focussing on long runs in the opening session, and with a six minute interruption to deal with a red flag to deal with thanks to a coming together between Topham and championship leader Kiern Jewiss in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, as Jewiss misjudged the braking speed of Topham’s McLaren and rear-ended him going into Bruxelles. Jewiss was given one Behaviou

It’s more work on top of an already busy weekend for the 2 Seas crew, with Kevin Tse and Maxi Götz out in a spare car (pictured below) after the former had a crash in his AMG on Friday testing. The pair finished 10th in the opening hour of practice.

Up the front, it was a relatively surprising second behind the Orange McLaren as Tom Wood powered the Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage to second, 0.259sec off the lead, as he squeezed ahead of Macleod and Topham by half-a-second on just his fourth lap around Spa this morning.

Despite a late start to the session, Jonny Adam – an old hand round these parts – powered the Blackthorn Aston to fourth, himself 0.054sec ahead of Matt Griffin in the Spirit of Race Ferrari 296 GT3 he shared with Duncan Cameron. 

Sixth went to the second Optimum McLaren of Morgan Tillbrook and Marvin Kirchhöfer, just 0.005sec slower than the green Ferrari, while seventh was the fastest of the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2s as Hugo Cook left it relatively late in the session to move up the #1 into the outer reaches of the top five.

GT4 proved there’s life after Lotus for Mahiki Racing as Josh Miller powered the team’s Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo to top spot in the class with an early 2m28.482sec that was streets ahead of the competition as they get to grips with a car they only had delivered by Ginetta in the paddock at Spa earlier this week.

Miller’s early stormer, sharing the car with Jack Mitchell, proved too much for the competition. Initially the nearest rival – if you count a gap of 0.945sec as near – was Luca Hopkinson and Harry George in their Optimum McLaren Artura. 

However, as the session wound on Charlie Robertson found himself on a storm and his penultimate lap of the session proved to be a good one. His 2m28.687sec wasn’t quite the fastest effort of the session but at least moved him to 0.205sec behind in a BMW that has had a significant rebuild after it’s shunt at Oulton Park in the hands of the unfortunate Ravi Ramyead. 

Hopkinson & George ended the session in third, with Team Parker Racing’s Jon Currie and Phil Keen in fourth in their Mercedes-AMG GT4 while the second of the Century Motorsport BMWs was in fifth thanks to Branden Templeton.

Notably, championship leaders Marc Warren & Jack Brown were seventh in the second of the Optimum Arturas, sandwiched between the remaining two Mahiki Ginettas.

Pre-Qualifying

While the morning’s opening session was pleasantly warm, lunch-time’s Pre-Qualifying was a scorcher. While air temperature was a hot but pleasant 27C, track temperatures rocketed up to a high of 51C as the chequered flag fell. With track and cockpits heating up, it was no wonder that while times were quick, they weren’t quite as strong as this morning. 

With both drivers needing to set solid times in the event that this evening’s Qualifying gets cancelled, the Ams were the first to really attack the circuit with Kevin Tse setting the early pace in his now turquoise 2 Seas Mercedes, his early 2m19.221sec was good but acceptable in a car that didn’t get to Spa until 2am Saturday morning.

While he was running fast, the other 2 Seas car was still getting repaired after Kiern Jewiss’ shunt in Free Practice led to a crack in the radiator amongst other front-end damage. 

Back on the track in a slightly reduced 55min session, and the next real change around in the times was a pair of back-t0-back quick laps from Matt Griffin in the Ferrari, his 2m17.862sec was solid for all of nine minutes before Tom Wood – who has been really gelling with the Beechdean Aston this weekend – knocked nearly two-tenths off the benchmark. 

There was a bit of a mid-session lull as some teams took stock of what had been, and still needed to be, done, while others were happy plodding round setting lap times. 

Getting into the final 20 minutes is when the action started to kick off again. First, Sam Neary went fastest in the Abba Mercedes with a 2m17.601sec, and had Hugo Cook nipping at his heels not long after as the Huracán racer set a time just 0.021sec off the pace. 

The day was shaping up strongly for the McLarens, though, and it was Marcus Clutton who charged to what looked like an unassailable time at the top of the standings with a 2m17.320sec.

There the time sat, until the very end of the session. Installed right at the end to do a qualifying, Marvin Kirchhöfer took over the Optimum #77 from Morgan Tillbrook and set the timing screens alight with a 2m17.050sec – the last lap of the session. 

His stormer knocked Clutton to second, Neary to third and Cook to fourth. Fifth went to the Beechdean Aston, with Wood and Andrew Howard in a solid spot for a good qualifying performance this evening.

In GT4, things were slightly less back-and-forth, more a session of two halves. Initially, it was Charlie Robertson who was setting the pace in the #71 Century BMW with the Optimum Artura of Marc Warren and Jack Brown seven-tenths or so back as the former got the early running. 

When Brown took over, though, things flipped. Improving all the time, it was on his penultimate lap of 12 in the session that the McLaren topped the timings with his 2m29.118sec putting him 0.224sec ahead of the BMW – driven by Ramyead toward the end of the session. 

Third went to the GT4 Silver Cup-entered Ginetta – this time it was Jack Mitchell rather than Josh Miller setting the time on his last lap to vault ahead of Harry George in the second Optimum Artura.

Qualifying is the next action for British GT, with the session getting underway at 18.35 local time, 17.35 in the UK.