+ Collard takes Race 1 pole on British GT return before Mitchell completes lambo’s perfect Saturday
+ Forsetti’s new Aston and Team Parker Mercedes-AMG start Monday’s GT4 races up front
+ Qualifying results
Barwell’s Lamborghinis will start British GT’s season openers up front on Monday after Rob Collard and Sandy Mitchell both bagged individual pole positions before GT4 qualifying honours were then split between Jamie Day – who handed Forsetti and Aston Martin’s new Vantage pole on debut – and Seb Morris (Team Parker Racing).
The Garage 59 McLaren shared by Shaun Balfe and Adam Smalley shrugged off its Pre-Qualifying accident to take both GT3 Silver-Am poles, while Marc Warren (Pro-Am, Forsetti) and Zac Meakin (Silver, Optimum) also topped their GT4 classes in Q3 and Q4, respectively.
GT3: BARWELL’S LAMBOS BOSS IT
History dictates that Barwell and its Lamborghinis almost always go well at Oulton, and that was most certainly the case in qualifying where its two Huracans claimed a pole apiece.
First up was Collard who looked set to start fifth before jumping to the top long after the chequered flag had flown.
His and everyone else’s Q1 was disrupted when Richard Neary’s Abba Mercedes-AMG crashed at Druids. Just five minutes remained when the action resumed with Collard’s team-mate Alex Martin leading Mark Radcliffe and Ian Loggie, but that was more than enough time for significant changes to occur.
Michael Johnston briefly held provisional pole before Collard and then Martin went faster still. But it was 2 Seas’ Kevin Tse who looked most likely to start up front when he set a new benchmark in the closing moments.
Collard wasn’t finished, though, and went 0.187s faster than the Mercedes-AMG in what was his first British GT qualifying session since winning the title back in 2020.
Loggie also jumped Martin late on to leave 2 Seas’ Mercedes-AMGs provisionally second and third, while Balfe – 0.352s behind Collard – earned Silver-Am pole.
Those positions changed post-qualifying, however, when Tse was found to have only completed one of his two mandatory flying laps. It means Loggie, Martin and Balfe now start second, third and fourth, while 2 Seas’ Mercedes-AMG drops down the order.
Radcliffe, Johnston and Mike Price complete the new top seven ahead of Morgan Tillbrook and Sacha Kakad who benefitted from Chris Buncombe’s two-place grid drop that was imposed for a Free Practice infringement.
The Pros were next up in a second session that was, in truth, short on drama.
Mitchell grabbed the early initiative from Tom Gamble before increasing his early 0.017s advantage to a tenth next time around. The Scot’s 1m32.777s remained untested thereafter.
Optimum’s McLaren was also safe on the front row despite Phil Keen’s best efforts, which saw 2 Seas’ #6 Mercedes-AMG bag a second third place grid slot. He shares row two with Ricky Collard, while Smalley matched his co-driver’s position and Silver-Am pole in fifth.
His time was marginally quicker than Paddock’s Martin Plowman who was demoted to row three late in the reckoning. Callum Macleod, Marcus Clutton and Alex Buncombe filled positions seven through nine, while 19-year-old Hugo Cook finished his first-ever British GT qualifying session an encouraging 10th overall and second in Silver-Am.
GT4: JAMIE’S DAY IN THE SUN AS MORRIS DANCES
Day and Morris proved the standout performers across the opening GT4 qualifying sessions of the year, taking a pole apiece for Forsetti Motorsport and Team Parker Racing, respectively.
Day proved simply unstoppable in the opening session. While Callum Davies led the early exchanges in RACE LAB’s McLaren Artura, he could do nothing when Day got into the groove, with his first flyer putting the new Aston Martin Vantage GT4 seven tenths clear, before then improving to end up 0.8s ahead of everyone else.
Jack Brown did the best job of the chasers, bringing Optimum’s McLaren up to second, albeit still well shy of Day’s benchmark, while Marc Warren impressed in his first British GT4 qualifying session by moving Forsetti’s second new Vantage up to third. Davies held fourth, ahead of Charles Dawson in Team Parker’s Mercedes-AMG and reigning champion Erik Evans, whose late effort got Academy’s new Ford Mustang into the top six.
The second segment was much harder to call, and ultimately went the way of local driver Morris after Zac Meakin’s multiple attempts to dethrone Team Parker’s Mercedes-AMG fell just short.
Morris’s first effort put him on provisional pole, but he struggled to improve from there and opened the door for others to whittle away the gap. Meakin came closest, getting within 0.073s and a glimpse of pole. But he couldn’t quite string together a lap good enough to steal top spot despite making several improvements across his sectors.
The contest was eventually settled a few minutes early when Sai Sanjay bashed the barriers on the exit of Shell hairpin, bringing out the red flags and cementing Morris’s position.
Tom Holland impressed on his run to third in the CWS Ginetta, with Charlie Robertson putting Century’s #71 BMW M4 on the outside of the second row. The fight over fifth ended up being a dead heat between Dan Vaughan’s Toyota Gazoo Racing UK Supra and Gordie Mutch’s Mahiki Racing Lotus. Vaughan starts fifth by virtue of recording the time first, but the top six still features as many different manufacturers.
British GT’s teams and drivers reconvene at Oulton on Easter Monday for two 60-minute sprint races. Watch them both live on Sky Sports F1 and SRO’s GT World YouTube channel.
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