Charlie Robertson: “We’ve been around long enough to know that whatever you think is going to happen, normally doesn’t”

Century Motorsport’s Charlie Robertson is keeping himself focused on the job at hand as he gets set to defend his British GT Championship GT4 title lead ahead of the final round of the year at Donington Park.

The BMW M4 GT4 racer combined superbly with co-driver Ravi Ramyead to qualify on the front-row for the #DoningtonDecider and give themselves a slender advantage heading into the two-hour race, having qualified two rows ahead of closest rivals Marc Warren and Jack Brown.

Just three points ahead of the Optimum Motorsport crew, after a topsy-turvy season for both teams with DNFs balancing each other out heading into round nine of nine, the pendulum has swung to Robertson and Ramyead. But the former Ginetta racer knows there’s still more to be done if they’re going to leave Donington Park with the title, but is confident in the package underneath them.

“It’s always been a good race car so I think we’re quite content with where we are, it’s just about staying out of trouble. This is a bit of crazy place in terms of gravel and GT3 cars coming up through the chicane and we’ve seen safety cars and Full Course Yellows here multiple times. Ravi’s starting the race and he’s got to stay out of trouble and try and bring it back to me at halfway and I’ll try and do the best job I can and we’ll see where we pop out,” he said.

The P2 start – leading the Pro-Am competition – came off the back of a thrilling qualifying session where Storm Amy’s gusting winds led to an extra challenge on top of the circuit’s already unforgiving track limits. He added: “The wind is really playing havoc with the balance of probably most cars. The first push lap I went down into the Old Hairpin and just understeered straight onto track limits so it caught me out and I had to cool down, reset, and go again and then managed to get a better lap in and go from there.”

The front-row start will hopefully lift the pair out of the usual mid-pack chaos that unfolds as the field barrels into Redgate for the first time, but Robertson hasn’t given much thought to specific tactics for the race: “We’ve been around long enough to know that whatever you think is going to happen normally doesn’t happen! Just do your job, stay focused, keep yourself calm and the rest will take care of itself!”

It’s a point echoed by Ramyead, who has taken class glory in the Ginetta GT Academy before finishing agonisingly second in the overall competition.

He added: “From my point of view, I’ve won championships before – sometimes you turn up leading and you don’t win, sometimes you turn up not leading and you do win. We pray to the motorsport gods and pray they’re kind to us for the race and we just have a clean executed race and whatever happens at 3.30pm happens, we’ll see!”