Sadly missing form my calendar this year was the Britcar 24hr endurance race. Instead, for one year only, it was replaced with the Britcar 1000km – A six hour race, held on the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit.
It was a shame to not have any night racing, but on the bright side, I didn’t have to sleep under a table in the media centre this year!
Before the 1000km race the Production Cup Championship and various support races plus qualifying sessions were running from Saturday morning through to Sunday lunch time to keep the spectators entertained and the main event for the MSA British Endurance Championship that took place on Sunday afternoon finished just seconds before the 6pm noise curfew kicked in.
Nineteen teams across three classes all took to the circuit at once meaning after a few laps there were plenty of back markers for the race leaders to weave through, making things much more interesting.
After 158 laps of the 5.9km circuit, Mark Poole and Richard Abra (part of last years winning team) lifted the trophy after a great run in their Barwell-run Aston Martin Vantage GT2. The win was all the more impressive when you consider the car was just 2 weeks old and had very little shakedown time.
The only real challengers were Horsepower racing in their Aston Martin Vantage GT3.
Endurance racing is known for its upsets and giant killing but there were no Class 2 teams pushing their way up into the ranks of the GT cars. There were very few retirements, the most notable being Bremner Racing’s Ferrari 430 GT3 and Team LNT’s Ginetta G55 GT3
There were just two short Safety Car periods, both for cars that had stopped out on the circuit which the Barwell Motorsport team used to their advantage , as Richard Abra explained: “We followed the Safety Car in after the first caution, so could fill the full 75 litres. After that it was just a case of head down and build a lead, then once I saw the #28 Aston spin in the gravel, we could back off”.
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