2 Seas Motorsport’s Kevin Tse and Maxi Götz look to be bouncing back from a tricky Spa weekend as they topped both British GT Championship practice sessions at a sun-drenched Snetterton in their Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

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The GT4 category looks like it’ll be another tight affair as both Mahiki Racing and Optimum Motorsport topped sessions with BMW and Mercedes machinery also looking strong around the Norfolk circuit. 

Free Practice

On the first day of competitive action at a scorching Snetterton, officially the third heatwave the UK has experienced this season, the British GT field was slowly getting up to speed ahead of what could be a decisive pair of 60-minute races as the championship fight heads to the home stretch.

Despite a trio of test sessions on Friday, held under largely the same conditions, teams were quick to get out on what was ever so slightly cooler conditions on Saturday morning as everyone looked to see how the Pirelli rubber would handle the slightly cooler conditions we could see for Sunday’s early race one. 

Not that it stopped the cockpit from being scorching, with Kiern Jewiss telling the circuit PA that temperatures were well over 40°C in his 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. Even with those temperatures, he was flying early on as he lowered Callum Macleod’s early benchmark time with a couple of quick laps he shared with Hugo Cook in the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini.

With 20 minutes complete, his 1m47.130sec was a good marker that took some challenge to better – Cook’s best time was just 0.017sec down. Even Marvin Kirchhöfer, a man who has a prodigious turn of speed in a McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, couldn’t quite get down to those times early in the running – he was two-tenths away.

Things settled for all of 10 minutes, when Maxi Götz jumped behind the wheel of the sister 2 Seas Mercedes and put in a storming lap – his 1m46.806sec as the clocked ticked to 30 minutes remaining knocked three tenths off the session best and sent a warning shot to his & teammate Kevin Tse’s rivals that their Spa woes were just a blip and they’re going to be well in the mix come qualifying and the race. 

With Pros and Ams giving themselves 10 or so minutes of running before swapping for the other, times were improving in fits and starts. That was true with Sandy Mitchell, returning after his international excursions to join Alex Martin in the second Barwell Huracán and utilising all his Lamborghini knowledge to put in a flying 1m47.074sec but yet he couldn’t quite dip into the same bracket Götz had powered into. 

That was about all that happened in the session as the final 15 or so minutes were dedicated to teams doing a bit of pitstop practice and refining their procedures ahead of the races. 

That meant, then, that it was a 2 Seas and Barwell intermingling, with Götz/Tse ahead of Martin/Mitchell, with Jewiss and Charles Dawson third and Cook fourth alongside Rob Collard.

Fifth was where you found the first of a different team as Kirchhöfer and Morgan Tillbrook kept themselves in a good spot, but a tyre delamination during what was looking like a good lap for the former meant there was no chance of an improvement.

Such was the speed and closeness of the session, the top eight were covered by 0.632sec. Spa winners Blackthorn AMR took sixth, and had the second Optimum McLaren and the Spirit of Race Ferrari behind them all covered by half-a-tenth of a second.

GT4 demonstrated the power of Balance of Performance as most of the brands represented in the class had a spell at the top, or near the top at least, with Jack Brown initially top in his Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura, before being unseated by Joe Wheeler’s Mahiki Racing Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo.

Running close to the top as well was Charlie Robertson in the BMW M4 GT4 Evo prepared by Century Motorsport, a tenth off Wheeler’s 1m55.978sec on his first run in the first half of the hour-long practice. 

Untypical for the class, times didn’t particularly change too much since that early burst of laps with the Mahiki still leading from Century. The only change of particular significance was Phil Keen powering the Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4 up to third, to add an extra brand to the mix at the top and ensure the Pro-Am cars locked out the top spots with 15 minutes remaining. 

With the leading Ginetta serving a two-minute stop/go penalty for track limits, and most of the rest of the class just sitting in the pits – thanks no doubt to the amount of testing the teams have already done meaning there’s not much needing to be ticked off in terms of set up.

Behind the top three, Harry George and Luca Hopkinson were the best of the Silver Cup entries in their Optimum Artura while the second of three Mahiki Ginettas was in fifth as Jack Mitchell set a decent lap alongside Josh Miller.

Having been fastest in the opening minutes, Brown and Marc Warren couldn’t improve as the session went on. Sixth isn’t where you’d expect the championship leaders, but should surely be in a good position come qualifying. 

Pre-Qualifying

With temperatures getting ever hotter, the grid was taking things relatively easy come lunchtime’s Pre-Qualifying session with none of the teams wanting to burn out too many sets of tyres – especially with testing giving drivers a good handle on what feels like a good set-up around the Snetterton circuit.

That probably explains the relatively steady start to proceedings as it was Blackthorn’s Jonny Adam and Paddock Motorsport’s owner/driver Martin Plowman who were trading times. For about 10 minutes they were swapping laps before Adam put in the decisive 1m48.282sec as they swapped to their respective Ams. 

It was at the halfway point where the times started to drop again as Marcus Clutton thought he set a quick time with a 1m48.065sec in the Orange Racing with JMH McLaren 720S GT3 but then that immediately had half-a-second taken off it by Hugo Cook in the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2.

With every driver needing to set two laps should something out the ordinary happen and qualifying is cancelled, there was a lot more movement in the order towards the end as Tse and Callum Macleod both set good laps in their Mercedes and McLarens respectively. 

Then in the final minutes, with more Pros behind the wheel, Götz set a storming lap to go top with a 1m47.006sec. Behind, and setting up qualifying perfectly, his fellow Germans Kirchhöfer and Sven Muller put in times that were just 0.038sec and 0.067sec slower. 

That didn’t change come the flag, with Macleod eventually finishing fourth alongside Carl Cavers while Plowman – alongside Mark Smith – took fifth in what was a good session for the duo. Certainly Smith has gone well at Snetterton recently, with his successes in GT Cup. 

Cook took sixth, while Tom Wood – who didn’t do any laps in the Beechdean Aston in the first session – did the bulk of the running in the second and went seventh – the last of the drivers within a second of the ultimate pace.

GT4 proved to be another steady affair – with Century’s Charlie Robertson telling the circuit commentary that the team were just doing their mandatory laps and not needing to do too much extra running – but it was a change at the top as Marc Warren belied his Am status to top the times in the #90 McLaren. 

Once again, Robertson and Ramyead were second, but by a slightly wider 0.833sec margin in the BMW, while it was a different Mahiki Ginetta, this the #69 of Blake Angliss and Steven Lake, that claimed the team honours and rounded out what was again a Pro-Am lock-out of the top three positions in the class.

Like in Free Practice, the best of the Silvers was George and Hopkinson as they split the Ginettas – Ian Duggan and Joe Wheeler just 0.101sec slower in their G56. 

Qualifying is the next track action for British GT, with the session getting underway at 15.45 local time.