Sandy Mitchell and Alex Martin cruised to #DoningtonDecider victory, but the 2025 British GT Championship crown has been taken by Charles Dawson and Kiern Jewiss after a manic season finale for the 2 Seas Motorsport crew which included numerous collisions and wild swings between wet and dry conditions. 

BRITISH GT DONINGTON | ENTRY LIST | TIMETABLE | BRANDS HATCH REPORT | PREVIEW | PRACTICE REPORT | QUALIFYING REPORT | CHARLIE ROBERTSON INTERVIEW

In GT4, a superb charge through to the lead allowed Jack Brown to become a double class champion and the first British GT4 driver to defend his title as he took the race win and the crown alongside Marc Warren in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura. 

GT3

From the start, the sunshine beamed down but dark clouds were looming in the distance beyond the first corner of Redgate causing everyone to dash to their weather radar of choice to try and keep drivers updated on what was happening – and keep wet Pirellis on standby.

The start itself was a dream for Rob Collard – in the pole-sitting Barwell Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 – as teammate Martin wasn’t as quick on the rolling start, giving the 2024 champion a clean run into Redgate and a handy early lead. 

For 10 minutes, the racing was pretty standard for British GT, with Collard growing his advantage over Martin, who was also keeping the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Dawson at a half-a-second gap in the early running. But then, the first blast of rain came and immediately the action started kicking off as first Nick Jones span his Team Parker Racing down the Craner Curves and Michael Orant beached his MKH Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT4 in the Old Hairpin gravel – needing a 13-minute intervention to recover.

As soon as the safety car came back in, the rain arrived once again – blowing in and out on what was still a strong wind in the aftermath of Storm Amy – and proved a first dose of really serious championship drama as title contender Giacomo Petrobelli caught up with Dawson as his Blackthorn Aston seemed more comfortable on slicks in the damp conditions. Going into the Old Hairpin, Petrobelli spotted a gap as Dawson looked to widen out the corner slightly and snuck up the inside. Level heading into the corner, Dawson pulled across and shut the door – sending them both into a spin they both managed to recover from but down the order. 

With the track drying out pretty quickly, the race settled back into a rhythm until just after the 50-minute mark where – looking to make up places again – Dawson got onto the back of Morgan Tillbrook in the Optimum McLaren 720S GT3. The pair put on a good fight, until Tillbrook ran slightly wide at Coppice and Dawson tried to lunge up the inside. They collided, with Tillbrook being sent through the gravel and Dawson being handed a 10-second penalty for avoidable contact. 

At the same time that was happening, Martin was reeling in a five-second deficit to Collard to almost nought as he pressed on toward the opening of the pit window. Unable to pass, the pair came in nose-to-tail but success penalties allowed Mitchell to take over from Martin and come out ahead of Hugo Cook, who took over from Collard. 

From there, the front of the race was pretty drama-free for Mitchell, who seems to be extremely ‘on it’ no matter the conditions. Which was handy when the final, heaviest, burst of rain completely soaked the circuit. That provided a conundrum for teams, stick it out on slicks with the hope the Pros could hold on, or go for wets and hope it stays wet for the rest of the race.

A number of teams elected to stay out and risk it, including Mitchell who said after the race that the decision not to pit was a ‘gamble that thankfully paid off’, but others decided to come in for wets. The most notable of those was Marcus Clutton, who was running third in the Orange Racing with JMH McLaren 720S GT3. 

For the drivers on wets, the decision paid off for a time as the wet track allowed them to cut through the field like a hot knife through butter. But come the final 15 minutes, the strong winds had led the track to be noticeably drier and the slick runners started to get back up to speed. That proved tricky for Clutton and others who pitted including Paddock Motorsport’s Martin Plowman and Blackthorn’s Aston, as they slipped down the order. Clutton took eighth alongside stand-in teammate Matt Topham, just ahead of the Nearys as Sam – the canary in the coal mine as he was an early adopter of wets – took ninth.

None of that bothered Mitchell, who cruised to a 30sec victory over the sister car, with Cook enjoying an even bigger gap over Kevin Tse and Maxi Götz who rounded out the podium. 

Despite that 2 Seas entry finishing ahead, the points advantage Dawson and Jewiss brought into the final round was more than enough for them to walk away with the title after taking fourth on the road – aided as well by Tillbrook finishing his race in the McLeans gravel trap just as the pit window opened.

After the race, Jewiss told GT REPORT about the emotional rollercoaster of the two-hour race: “Well, it got a bit harder at some points didn’t it? Facing backwards at the Old Hairpin is never ideal, when it flicked to the onboard we saw the championship flash before our eyes and luckily they all missed us. It was just chaotic wasn’t it? Slicks in the rain in both stints, at one point you’re lost for words and skating around on slicks is the worst possible way you could be when fighting for the championship. I was at the front of the pack and just being the first to everything was just horrible. You never knew what was coming up but I was very grateful for it to be over – certainly when it dried!”

Behind the new champions, Blackthorn’s one-off entry of Darren Leung and Nick Yelloly took fifth and best of the Aston Martins as they finished just ahead of Andrew Howard and Tom Wood – the Beechdean AMR crew confirming their Silver-Am title with sixth. 

GT4

Heading into the #DoningtonDecider with a three-point advantage, long-time chasers Ravi Ramyead and Charlie Robertson found themselves being the chased in a title fight that swung consistently between the Century Motorsport crew and Optimum Motorsport’s Marc Warren and Jack Brown.

In the first hour, it was advantage BMW as Ramyead settled into second behind pole-sitter Luke Garlick for the opening laps and elected to not battle too hard with Harry George who powered up to second in his Optimum McLaren Artura – third still solid enough for the title as long as Warren remained behind him. 

That wasn’t quite a given, though. After the neutralisation to recover Orant’s MKH Aston to the track, Warren was all over the back of Ramyead but not pushing too hard to take a risky overtake because he had a significant advantage – no pitstop success penalty. Their Brands Hatch DNF gave them no time, compared to 15 seconds for Ramyead and Robertson. 

Come the pits, that’s exactly what happened as Brown got into the car with a handy advantage over Robertson – with Blake Angliss, taking over from Garlick – in between them both. 

But as the rain came, the drama unfolded. The McLaren didn’t seem as strong in the wet conditions, with Brown electing to let Angliss go through to the lead to save fighting too hard and causing a potentially title-ending accident. Indeed, Robertson himself was on a charge in the BMW and suddenly that advantage from the pits started to look more tenuous. 

As the track dried out, the speed came back to Brown and his second place suddenly looked like it might not be enough – especially considering he only had a slender one-point grip on the title as Robertson went back-and-forth in a battle with Luca Hopkinson in the second Artura for third. 

Not wanting to totally rely on Hopkinson to try and relegate the BMW a place, Brown was on the back of the Mahiki Ginetta at the head of the field. It wasn’t an easy battle, but a slight mistake from Angliss through the Fogarty Chicane allowed Brown to go up the inside and through into the lead at the Melbourne Hairpin with five minutes to go. That eventually gave Optimum a double-digit cushion in the standings, as Robertson couldn’t fight back to third after Hopkinson fought his way through in the closing minutes.

Brown’s victory was his 14th in the category – adding the ‘winningest’ driver in GT4 honour to the first driver to defend a British GT4 title, the first driver to win two crowns, and – alongside Warren – the first Pro-Am crew to win the GT4 title since Graham Johnson and Mike Robinson took the title back in 2016. For good measure, they also took the Pro-Am title. 

Brown told GT REPORT: “It’s been a very up-and-down year, this year. We were chased the whole way by the BMW fighting what has seemed most of the time to be an uphill battle but this race was the race where it counted and they had the success penalty which just worked in our favour. For me, it was just about getting out there and not doing anything silly, keeping it on track and tidy.

“In the wet, the Ginetta was a lot quicker so I just let him go and then the dry came to us again and we managed to get him back. I’ve been here before, and I know if you box for wets and it stops you’ve lost so you have to stick it out.”

Optimum’s weekend in GT4 couldn’t have gone better, as Hopkinson and George took third overall – second in Silver Cup – to take the overall Silver Cup title to cap what had been a more solid season for the duo. 

Second overall, and winning the Silver Cup in the race, was Angliss and Garlick who gave Mahiki a reason to smile after what’s been a tough weekend for Steven Lake’s squad. 

The final title decided on the day was the GT4 Endurance Cup, which went the way of Team Parker Racing’s Ed McDermott and Seb Morris, who took fifth in the race. 

That’s all the track action done for the 2025 British GT Championship season, the next time the cars will be out on track in anger will be 25/26 April 2026 as the Silverstone 500 starts the season.