Orange Racing by JMH and Barwell Motorsport carried on where they left off in Friday testing as they embraced the sweltering Oulton Park conditions to top the first practice sessions of the weekend as the British GT Championship heads to the North West for a pair of Bank Holiday sprint races.

BRITISH GT OULTON PARK: PREVIEW | ENTRY LIST | LIVE TIMING

In GT4, it was Toro Verde GT who proved to be the team to beat as their Ginetta and Porsche entries each topped a session thanks to Jack Mitchell and Tom Bradshaw respectively, but the Aston Martin crews are also looking strong and could prove to be the car to beat heading into the afternoon’s Qualifying.

Free Practice

With three lengthy test sessions on Friday, topped by Orange Racing by JMH, Optimum Motorsport, and Rodin Motorsport, it was no surprise that Saturday morning’s first practice session – held in the exactly the same bright and sunny weather conditions – was free of drama and with few changes in the order after the first 10 minutes.

Notably, that’s because Orange Racing’s Marcus Clutton took his first two laps of the 60-minute of the session and used them to set a time that wouldn’t be bettered by the rest of the field. He first flying lap was a 1m33.254sec, and then just a few minutes later he bettered that to a 1m32.502sec to keep up the fine form of not just his squad, but of the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo runners. The Woking machine has been flying, not only just this weekend but in pre-event testing, and from this session it seems as though we might already be able to stake a claim for who might take the two poles on offer for Monday’s racing.

That was reinforced by the fact that Morgan Tillbrook and Ben Barnicoat, in their Optimum-run McLaren, powered up to third in the closing 15 minutes of the race at the hands of Barnicoat. In the closing minutes, he was pushing again to try and claim the top spot and despite some rapid efforts, he couldn’t quite move up from third and instead settled for being one half of a McLaren sandwich.

The filling was the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of Hugo Cook and Rob Collard. The former was setting the pace early on, and fell three-tenths short of toppling Clutton’s pace-setting lap. But with the race guile of the Barwell team, that’s a strong position if they can emulate that in qualifying. Especially because the second car of Alex Martin and Jarrod Waberski took fourth as the chequered flag fell thanks to a late lap from Waberski to put them as the only other car within a second of the fastest time. Barwell could be the ones to snatch pole from the grip of the 720S crews.

Adding a touch of variety to the McLaren/Lamborghini lock-out of top four was the Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 Evo of Charles Clark and Jonathan Beeson. The championship leaders showed good pace throughout the session, and took fifth at the flag, pipping the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Kevin Tse and Ben Green by 0.029sec.

Seventh went the way of another McLaren, this the second Optimum car of last year’s GT4 champions Marc Warren and Jack Brown, who finished one-tenth ahead of Beechdean’s Andrew Howard and Ross Gunn.

The Rodin Ferrari 296 GT3 of Josh Buchan and Cameron Campbell took ninth, whilst Paddock Motorsport’s Martin Plowman and Mark Smith rounded out the top 10.

In the GT4 class, the action was equally sedate. For a good chunk of the session it was Jack Mitchell, who ran 121 miles to get to Oulton Park as part of a fundraising effort for the BRDC Motor Sport Charity, who showed no signs of fatigue to initially lead the way in the Toro Verde GT Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo. His lap of 1m41.935sec looked good, but that didn’t account for Darren Turner. The Aston Martin legend is no slouch at any circuit he races at, and the morning session was no exception as he improved on Mitchell’s early time by four-tenths in his Grange Racing with FSR Aston Martin Vantage GT4.

There wasn’t much shuffling behind after that, with the top two locked in within the first 10 minutes. Third went to the second Toro Verde entry, this the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS CS of Ian Duggan and Tom Bradshaw, the latter half-a-second down on his team-mate.

Fourth went the way of championship leaders Hadley Simpson and Thomas Holland in their Innovation Racing Ginetta, finishing 0.023sec ahead of their Silverstone sparring partners MK Racing, with Will Orton and Jessica Hawkins putting in a solid morning of running. Another sign of an intriguing battle ahead?

After the session, there was slight drama, as the Optimum McLaren of Tillbrook and Barnicoat was disqualified from the results of the session after the car was found to be 1.4mm under the 50mm ride height during scrutineering checks.

Pre-Qualifying

Compared to the first session of the morning, Pre-Qualifying offered more intrigue as fast laps became the order of the afternoon as teams fine-tuned set-ups ahead of Qualifying.

From the off, the Pros were in and setting early flyers to get set-ups confirmed and it was a combination of 2 Seas’ Ben Green, Rodin’s Buchan and Century’s Charles Clark who were trading fast times around the low 1m33sec as the track temperature heated up to over 30degrees – what feels like a rare weekend of hot weather, especially in the North West of England.

With this session setting grids if Qualifying gets cancelled for whatever reason, the Ams spent much of the middle 40 or so minutes making sure they logged the best times they could before their Pro-rated team-mates jumped back behind the wheel. The man who fired the gun on those ever faster times starting to be set was Matt Griffin.

Sharing a Lamborghini with Duncan Cameron, in the process of just a handful of laps he jumped up to third and then to the top of the standings in a Barwell-run Huracán he was wrestling round every single lap.

But then as times picked up, guess what? It was the McLarens and the other two Barwell Lamborghinis which picked up the mantle. Ben Barnicoat, making hay after the car’s ride height breach in Free Practice, flew up to the top of the standings with a 1m33.061sec.

Hugo Cook was just behind in the Lamborghini, but then as he got more and more dialled in to the technical nature of the Cheshire circuit, he stormed to the top with a flyer of his own. A 1m32.857sec put two-tenths between himself and the rest, and sent out a warning to the competition that Barwell could easily walk away with plenty of success this weekend.

Second went to Barnicoat and Tillbrook, but were close to being knocked off that mantle. That’s because after a first-half of the session practicing driver changes and letting Simon Orange set his laps, Marcus Clutton got behind the wheel of the Orange Racing 720S and set about powering up the order. His ultimate effort was a good one, third and just 0.028sec off Barnicoat’s best time.

Although, like he almost did to the Optimum crew, Clutton’s position was rather shaky too as Jarrod Waberski flew up to fourth and ended up 0.017sec down. He was looking to be going better as he started a run with a few minutes to go, but the car limped to a halt at Britten’s with just 90sec left on the clock, causing a red flag and a slightly early end to the session.

Fifth went to Cameron and Griffin, showing that the balance of power is definitely with the Lamborghini and McLaren teams as it stands at the moment.

The best of the rest was Kevin Tse and Ben Green, as the latter put in a 1m33.256sec early in the session on older tyres and then didn’t really get the chance to improve. They did push out a pair of flying McLarens, though, with the entry of Warren and Brown finishing ahead of the Paddock entry which lost a good chunk of running with what appeared to be mechanical gremlins in the pink and black machine.

Ian Loggie and Aaron Walker finished Pre-Qualifying in ninth in their 2 Seas Mercedes, with the Ferrari of Buchan and Campbell ending in 10th after what had been a rapid start to the hour-long running before fading away slightly toward the end.

GT4 proved to be a calmer affair, as the ordered changed up a few times but without the flurry of rapid laps in that made the timing screens light up like a Christmas tree. Initially, it was Darren Turner who once again hit the top in his Aston with a lap that stood until just before halfway until he was pipped by a bolt from the blue as first Will Orton in the MK Racing Aston and then Tom Bradshaw in the Rothmans-style Porsche leaped ahead, the latter on top with a 1m42.240sec.

That lapped proved too good to be beaten, which meant it was a case of everyone shuffling in behind. MK Racing maintained second, ahead of a pair of BMWs as Ernie Graham and Colin Turkington – thanks to the latter’s rapid lap – took third by 0.045sec ahead of the Century BMW M4 GT4 Evo of Branden Templeton and Jack Collins.

Turner finished fifth alongside Daniel Lavery, ahead of the Townsend Racing powered by Fox Motorsport Vantage of Joe Wheeler and James Townsend. The pair can count themselves unlucky to only be sixth, as Wheeler was set for what looked to be a pretty decent lap before the red flag came out to cut it short.

Notably missing from the session was the Toro Verde Ginetta of Jack Mitchell and Luke Shaw which had ran well in the morning, there’s no news on why that car couldn’t make it out for the lunch-time running.