Spa-Francorchamps offered its traditional mix of long straights, unforgiving corners and dramatic elevation change for round five of the 2025 British GT Championship. Under clear skies and over three hours of racing, it was Blackthorn’s #7 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, piloted by Giacomo Petrobelli and Jonny Adam, that took control and never looked back – leading 53 of the 71 laps en route to a commanding win.

Starting from pole, the Aston duo executed a flawless race to complete 71 laps (308.99 miles) in 3:00:28.281, finishing over 25 seconds clear of the chasing pack. Behind them, the #77 Optimum Motorsport McLaren of Morgan Tillbrook and Marvin Kirchhöfer showed blistering pace, setting the fastest lap of the race – a 2:17.699 on lap 46 – but had to settle for second place after falling short on overall consistency.

The fastest lap leaderboard, however, only tells part of the story. The perfect lap time was 2 minutes 16.906 seconds, a time calculated by adding the fastest sectors together regardless of who completed them. The closest car to this time was the #77 Optimum Motorsport McLaren with a best lap of 2:17.699 which was 0.793 down and 0.428 slower than it’s ideal lap. The #77’s ideal laptime was 2:17.271 achieving this with a single fastest time in sector 2 and third fastest times in sector 1 and 3.

This was the reverse of the second fastest lap, completed by the #7 Blackthorn Aston Martin which managed the best times in sector 1 and 3 and the third best time in sector 2. Despite this the Aston was still 0.860 seconds slower than its ideal time of 2:17.515.


The GT3 that got closest to its ideal time was the #18 2 Seas Motorsport car which managed an ideal time of 2:18.725 and a best time of 2:18.853, just 0.128 seconds slower.

The #71 Century Motorsport BMW had the best ideal time in the GT4 class, clocking a time of 2:29.122 seconds but could only manage to post a best lap 0.886 seconds slower. The #84 Mahiki Racing Ginetta came closest to it’s ideal time with a best lap of 2:29.693 seconds that was just 0.072 seconds down on its ideal lap of 2:29.870.

It also seems that the #71 BMW matched its ideal lap with the GT4 perfect lap having posted the fastest sectors of any GT4 car.

A standout for consistency was the #18 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG, which fell just 0.128s short of its ideal 2:18.725 – the closest delta in the GT3 field. In GT4, a similar trend emerged: the #84 Mahiki Racing Ginetta (Jack Mitchell/Josh Miller) posted a best time just 0.072s slower than its ideal, while the class-winning #71 Century Motorsport BMW (Ravi Ramyead/Charlie Robertson) was a full 0.886s adrift of its potential despite logging the fastest individual GT4 sectors.

Looking at top speeds and the winner was the #86 Honda NSX of Bridger Motorsport with the data showing the Honda posting the fastest times at intermediate 1 and at intermediate 3 whch both cover the fastest sections of the track. At intermediate 1 they posted a fastest speed of 164.8 MPH which was 1.2 MPH quicker than the #7 Blackthorn Aston Martin. At intermediate 3 they posted a fastest speed of 101.3 MPH which was 0.7 MPH quicker that the #18 2 Seas Motorsport McLaren, but at intermediate 2, could only manage the twelve best speed of 104mph compared with the fastest set by the #77 McLaren of 106mph.

The individual driver statistics don’t show any big surprises, in GT3 almost every pairing split the driving time with the AM driver doing most of the work, usually somewhere between 53 and 54% of the driving time. Those that bucked this trend were the #55 Spirit of Race Ferrari with Duncan Cameron completing 43.10% of the driving leaving Matt Griffin picking up 52.20% of the race. The #88 Bridger Motosport Honda NSX drivers split their driving time equally, 47.28% (1:26:13.949) for Chun Cheong Ip and 47.61% (1:26:50.843) for Jay Bridger a difference of just 36.894 seconds. Oddly, Bridger actually completed 3 fewer laps, 33 as opposed to 36 by Ip, however this might be due to completing part of his stint under the safety car, however this wasn’t something that seemed to affect the other drivers.

GT4 followed a similar pattern with the exception of Seb Morris and Phil Keen both completing more laps than their respective co-drivers.

Petrobelli completely dominated the fastest lap sequence, posting successive fastest laps between laps 2 and 5 inclusive and again on lap 8 where he posted his best time of the day of 2 minutes 18.937. Nobody else was able to improve on this until lap 46 when Marvin Kirchhöfer in the #77 Optimum Motorsport McLaren posted a time over a second faster, with a time of 2 minutes 17.699 seconds.

Petrobelli also claimed the most laps at the head of the field, spending 28 laps and completing a distance of 121.77 miles leading the pack. Teammate Jonny Adam lead for 25 laps with Matt Griffin claiming 17 laps at the front in the Spirit of Race Ferrari. Charles Dawson was the only other driver to lead the race, taking the lead on lap 27 for one lap before handing it back to Jonny Adam.

GT4 saw a tight battle unfold, with the #71 BMW eventually taking the win. But it was the #84 Mahiki Ginetta that set the pace with the fastest GT4 lap – 2:29.693 – and came closest to its ideal lap. In terms of sector mastery, the #71 BMW had the perfect combination but couldn’t quite string it together on a single lap.

Two cars failed to finish: the #8 Team Abba Mercedes which crashed early on, and the #14 Century Motorsport BMW that was disqualified after rejoining the race after it was returned to the pits on the back of a recovery vehicle.

For full results visit TSL Timing

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