LMP3 Cup, GT Cup And MSVR Championships At Brands

The second event of MSVR Club Car Championship, taking place this time at Brands Hatch, started off with the LMP3 Cup. Rounds 3 and 4 of the championship had much reduced grids with only four cars competing in Saturday’s race though the old adage that “it only takes two cars” to race was apt…

The #21 Mectech driven by Bradley Smith and Duncan Williams would take pole position though a strong start from Colin Noble would give the #1 Nielsen/Ecosse the lead, which he and teammate Tony Wells would hold on to, claiming the first of their two victories over the weekend though the former was not an easy win with the #2 car driven by Bonamy Grimes and Johnny Mowlem finishing only 0.5s behind. While the #21 Mectech would set the fastest lap and reduce a 30-second deficit on the two lead cars to a mere five seconds toward the end of the race in a recovery from an early spin, it was put out of contention by a late stop/go penalty (discovered to have been given in error), keeping Smith/Duncan in third place ahead of the #96 Speedworks driven by Jack Butel and Dominic Paul.

Qualifying ahead of Round 4’s race on Sunday would see Williams and Smith claim pole position again after a hot lap from Paul that seemed likely to be fastest ended with a heavy crash that ended the #96 Speedwork’s weekend. Despite setting pole position again, Mechtech’s drivers were unable to convert this into a win again as the #1 and #2 cars would repeat the same 1-2 finish from the day before.

In the GT Cup, Optimum Motorsport had a perfect race weekend as its #98 GTO-class Audi R8 GT3 won all three races outright, claimed two pole positions and set a fastest lap over the weekend with Ollie Wilkinson at the wheel for both sprint races and with teammate Bradley Ellis in the feature race. Drawing parallels to Optimum Motorsport’s success, FF Corse’s duo of Chris Froggatt and John Sawbridge took a clean sweep of wins piloting the #93 Ferrari 488 Challenge in the GTC category. Top Cats Racing would claim victories in all three races over the weekend in the GTB class albeit with different drivers. Top Cats Racing would also win two of the races in the GTA class whilst Harlaxton would the second race in the GTA category.

The F3 Cup saw close competition throughout the weekend with Stuart Wiltshire and Cian Carey enjoying Top 3 finishes in both races. While Jacopo Sebastiani put his car on pole position in qualifying for the first F3 Cup race, he was unable to convert it into a victory, having lost the lead to Wiltshire. Carey would claim the final step of the podium with Shane Kelly taking a close 4^th place finish (and fastest lap) in the first race; the top-4 finishers were covered by a mere 2.1 seconds. Cian Carey would take full advantage of his pole position for the second race by taking victory ahead of Wiltshire by less than a second. Tony Bishop would take 3^rd, unaffected by a penalty received for exceeding track limits. Neither Kelly north Sebastiani would repeat the success of the first race as a first-lap collision in the second race would see both drivers fail to finish the race.