Simon Orange and Marcus Clutton stormed to victory and the British GT Championship title in one of the best finales of recent years as they capitalised on a rare Rob Collard mistake to take the crown by just six points in their Orange Racing by JMH McLaren.
The GT4 title was arguably one of the best races the championship has ever seen as Darren Turner’s sharp elbows kept Will Orton behind in what was a 40-minute battle for the crown. Despite ending the season level on points with Orton’s MK Racing squad, title success went the way of the new Grange Racing by FSR team based on number of wins for Turner and team-mate Daniel Lavery.
Victory in GT4 went the way of Josh Stanton and George Gamble in their Optimum McLaren Artura, the former did everything he needed to do to try and take an unlikely title win but luck didn’t fall his way.
GT3
Considering how dramatic the title fight ended up, the first hour was actually pretty calm, straightforward and seemingly an easy win for Rob Collard and Hugo Cook.
The title leaders heading into this race, the Barwell Motorsport pair did everything they needed to do. Qualifying second, Collard took the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 by the scruff of the neck and used every ounce of his experience to pull off a remarkable move for the lead. Dipping half-a-wheel on the Paddock Hill gravel, he braked as late as possible to go round the outside of pole-sitter Kevin Tse going into Druids.
At the same time, Orange pulled off something of a masterclass. First bullying Marc Warren into staying behind on the run into the first corner, he then benefitted from Morgan Tillbrook getting boxed in behind Tse to also go the long way round at Druids and slot into third.
From there, the trio started to ever so slightly pull away as the pace Tillbrook had shown all weekend in the Optimum McLaren 720S GT3 Evo2 seemed to fade away slightly despite his best efforts to keep in touch with the leaders.
For a good 15 or so minutes, the race settled down into a drama-free groove of all the crews not really picking up any time, or significantly losing any time. But then the first of the many flash points in the GT3 title fight. Tse was sitting pretty in second, splitting the title contenders, but a momentary mistake by going too deep into Stirling’s and through the gravel allowed Orange to slip through unchallenged and sit on Collard’s bumper.
The pair were attached by a rubber band as they bobbed and weaved their way through GT4 traffic, with the margin between them shrinking to 0.3sec and growing out to around two seconds as neither of them wanted to take too many risks passing slower cars.
Just as it looked as though the pitstops were going to be the major tactical changing point – with Collard needing to serve success penalty, and Orange having none – significant title drama unfolded. Unchallenged going through the relative fast right-hander of Sheene, Collard clouted the kerb on the inside a touch too hard, which unsettled the Lamborghini and launched him into an unrecoverable spin straight into the gravel trap.
Whilst he was able to recovered under a Full Course Yellow, he dropped to 11th and a lap down on his GT3 rivals, handing the balance of title power to Orange, who’s strategy of patient chasing was paying off in spades.
Come the pit window, Clutton took over the McLaren with one objective – keep it smooth, keep it consistent, and avoid track limits. With Orange picking up three penalties in the opening hour, two more would mean a drive-through and a potentially fatal blow to their title aspirations.
Smooth and quick is exactly what Clutton did. Picking his way carefully through traffic, he initially opened up a 15-second gap over Jack Brown in the Optimum machine he took over from Warren, who was fighting with Ben Barnicoat, installed behind the wheel of another Optimum entry he took over from Tillbrook.
By the time Barnicoat got past Brown, who was defending somewhat but conscious that the car he was fighting was not only his team-mate but a title battler, just after a second FCY to recover the stranded Innovation Racing Ginetta, the lead had built up to 21 seconds with just under 40 minutes of the season to go.
Catching traffic at different times, the lead was falling and rising almost every lap, but one thing was certain, Barnicoat was indeed slowly closing the gap but would he have enough time? As the clock ticked down, the gap was reducing but Clutton was reaching his zenith. Never one to shy away from a fight, or give a stint anything less than 100%, Clutton was putting the car exactly where it needed to be and as the chequered flag was finally brandished by the marshals on the finish line, he had an advantage of 16.510sec; winning his, Simon’s and the Orange Racing squad’s first British GT title. Indeed, their win also secured them the Pro-Am title, a great haul for the team run by a stalwart of GT racing in Britain – Jason Hughes, and his JMH Automotive squad.
Second for Barnicoat and Tillbrook wasn’t enough, they needed the 10.5 point swing between first and second to fall in their favour and thus miss out on the title by just six points. That small margin an agonising result in what had been one of the best British GT seasons for Tillbrook, having taken two wins and a third before today’s runner-up spot, but a costly DNF largely out of Tillbrook’s hands at Donington Park, where he was caught be a rogue damp patch on the run to the Melbourne Hairpin, made all the difference.
After their 11th placed finish, Collard and Cook ended the season third in the points on 124, 14.5 down on Orange and Clutton, after what was another case of a good season just coming unstuck at the final round. In some small consolation, Collard did end the season as the Masters champion.
In the race, third went the way of Jack Brown and Marc Warren as they ended their debut season of GT3 racing on the podium and hopefully giving them a good base to build from if they return in 2027.
Fourth went the way of Charles Clark and Jonathan Beeson as the former prevailed in a thrilling battle with the second Barwell Lamborghini started by Alex Martin and finished by Jarrod Waberski. Waberski and Clark battled hammer and tongs as they fought for not only Silver-Am second, but the SRO GT Academy crown; a seat at next year’s Crowdstrike 24 Hours of Spa for the best GT3 Silver driver. Fighting for more than 20 minutes, the race finally went in Clark’s favour after an audacious lunge going into Paddock Hill Bend allowed the Century Motorsport driver through and, in theory, the Academy title.
On his final British GT race as a driver, he said he wants to be back as a team boss next year, Beechdean AMR’s Andrew Howard took sixth and a spot on the Pro-Am podium alongside Ross Gunn, fending off a late charge from Chris Lulham in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes which lost a podium chance having to serve a drive-through for a pitstop infringement.
GT4
If GT3 was a study in nervous tension to see if Barnicoat could reel in Clutton, GT4 was a bare-knuckle boxing match where you were waiting with baited breath to see if any of the contenders could land a knock out blow on one of their rivals.
At the start, George Gamble did everything he needed to do to give Josh Stanton every chance he could to make his slim chance of the title (30.5 points down with 37.5 available) a reality. A great start in the bright yellow McLaren Artura kept Paddock Motorsport’s Blake Angliss behind and banking them maximum points.
But they always knew they needed misfortune to befall their rivals if they were to make their lead actually convert to some silverware. And with Branden Templeton pinching a position at the start to move up to third, it looked as though the Century Motorsport driver was going to keep himself right in the title fight alongside Jack Collins in their BMW M4 GT4 Eco.
As they started to get lapped by the GT3 traffic, the time gaps only expanded, making those championship permutations, in theory, get only more solidified.
That was made even more so in quite a sad moment for Innovation Racing. Hadley Simpson and Thomas Holland came into the finale tied on points with the Century duo, and Simpson was doing a great job to stay in the fight until just before the pit window opened. The rear left tyre seemed to wrap itself around the wheel, robbing Simpson of the ability to even limp the car round to the pits as he pulled off on the Derek Minter Straight and out of the title fight.
But that doesn’t even come close to the drama that occurred in the final hour. Come the mandatory pitstops at the halfway mark of the two-hour race, success penalties and additional time for Silver Cup crews vaulted Darren Turner up to second from fifth after a great opening hour from Daniel Lavery.
Whilst Turner is no slouch, and is probably exactly the man you’d want in your Aston Martin Vantage GT4, the Grange Racing driver spent the last 30 minutes of the season pulling out every trick in his book to hold on to that second place and their only chance of claiming the GT4 title.
He was the head of a three-car train which included the Toro Verde GT Ginetta of Jack Mitchell and the MK Racing Aston Martin of Will Orton – Turner’s nearest title rival.
With the points standings, Turner couldn’t lose even a single place and was doing everything in his power to stop Mitchell from getting through. The Aston was faster on the straights, but the Ginetta seemed stronger in the second half of the lap so it was an intriguing back-and-forth.
For lap after lap, Turner was doing everything he could to stay ahead with neither driver behind finding an opportunity to break the Aston Martin factory driver’s considerable resolve.
But then in the final four minutes, a moment of high drama. Running up to Druids, Turner moved slightly left to give a lapping Mercedes GT3 more space but hadn’t realised Mitchell had stuck his nose up the outside. Turner made contact with the Ginetta, which went onto two wheels having clipped the Vantage’s rear-left corner.
Remarkably, both continued without any damage but it allowed Orton through into third and right on Turner. That drew the pair level on points, 143.5 each, with Turner and Lavery ahead thanks to their two wins. That meant the final three laps were going to be an all out dogfight between the two Astons.
Turner was playing a blinder but an ever-so-slight loss of speed coming out the final corner of Clearways for the last time gave Orton the opportunity to turn the run to the chequered flag into a drag race. They were side-by-side, but a slight dip of wheels onto the grass cost Orton momentum, and Turner held on to take second on the road, but the GT4 title, by only 0.250sec.
Third in the title fight went to Collins and Templeton, who lost out through the pit window and then the former was mugged of fifth on the road by Revie Lake’s Paddock McLaren in the closing stages to drop them to 139 points, only 4.5 off the title.
Stanton and Gamble’s comfortable victory proved to not be enough in the end, their dominance did close them in to within 9.5 points, but they needed more misfortune to fall their way than ultimately happened.
In the race itself, the Astons took second and third behind Gamble and Stanton, with Mitchell taking fourth and a Pro-Am podium alongside Luke Shaw.
Of note a touch further down the order, James Townsend took eighth in his Townsend Racing by Fox Motorsport Aston Martin that he raced by himself for the full race.
The 2027 British GT Championship gets underway at Snetterton on April 10/11 with a pair of one-hour races. Make sure you follow GT REPORT over the off-season for all the latest news on entries for the season.
