British GT Championship Round 3, Rockingham

Lee Mowle and Yelmer Buurman came from the back of the field to take their maiden British GT Championship victory in a thrilling two-hour race at Rockingham on Sunday (29th April).

Four appearances from the safety car and a variety of penalties helped the ERC Sport Mercedes-AMG pairing to the top step of the podium, where they were joined by the TF Sport pairing of Derek Johnston and Marco Sorenson, and the Team Parker Racing duo of Ian Loggie and Callum McLeod. Johnston and Sorenson were subsequently given a 30 second post-race penalty, promoting the Beechdean AMR squad of Andrew Howard and Darren Turner to third in the final results.

Light drizzle was falling as Jon Minshaw’s Demon Tweeks Lamborghini led the field into Turn 1 from pole position, chased by Flick Haigh in the Optimum Motorsport Aston Martin. Haigh was demoted to third by a charging Sam De Haan just before the first safety car period, which was brought out by Shaun Balfe’s McLaren hitting the wall hard on the start-finish straight.

Haigh then lost further time with a trip through the gravel at Tarzan, promoting Graham Davidson to third behind the two Barwell Lamborghinis. David Pattionson then beached the Tolman Motorsport GT4 McLaren bringing out the safety car for a second time.

Davidson pounced on De Haan at the restart, and the set about reducing Minshaw’s lead. Davidson was unable to get past before the pitstops, but the Jetstream car was perfectly placed to emerge in the lead when the Barwell Lamborghini served its 20 second success penalty for winning the previous round at Oulton Park.

Maxime Martin took over from Davidson and duly emerged from the pitstop cycle with a 15 second lead, which was immediately wiped out by two safety car interventions in quick succession. The Optimum Motorsport Aston Martin had dropped out of contention in the stops, a stuck fuel hose and a small fire costing the team a huge amount of time in the pits.

Maxime Martin lead the field into the final 40 minutes, but the #47 Aston Martin caught the attention of the stewards for multiple track limit violations and was handed a drive through penalty. That should have handed the lead back to the #33 Lamborghini, but a charging Yelmer Buurman had just passed Phil Keen to take advantage of Martin’s penalty after coming from the back of the GT3 grid.

To further compound the Barwell team’s misery, the #33 car was given a 10 second stop-go penalty for a pitstop infringement. The sister car had retired at the halfway stage with clutch failure before Jonny Cocker could take over from Sam De Haan.

With all those behind faltering or being penalised, Buurman was left with a straightforward run to the flag, taking the win by 4.3 seconds from Marco Sorensen on the road before the latter was penalised for avoidable contact earlier in the race.

In GT4, the HHC Motorsport Ginetta pairing of Patrik Matthiesen and Callum Pointon took their first British GT class win, ahead of the Ultra-Tek Nissan crew of Stephen Johansen and Jesse Antilla. Academy Motorsport’s Matt Nicoll-Jones and Will Moore took the final step of the podium.

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