+ Result: Pre-Qualifying, Silverstone
Optimum Motorsport made it two top times from two sessions at Silverstone, with Callum Macleod and Mike Price setting the pace in a heavily disrupted Pre-Qualifying.
Three red flag stoppages prevented anybody from getting into much of a flow across the final hour before Qualifying, with Macleod’s speed during the early stages of the session proving decisive. The result follows Optimum’s sister car of Morgan Tillbrook and Marvin Kirchhöfer leading the way in Free Practice.
There was more movement in GT4, with Jack Mitchell doing the double for Mahiki, snatching top spot shortly after the first stoppage in the Lotus Emira he shares with Steven Lake.
With the track evolving with more rubber being laid down the chance was there for yet more lap time improvements, but in reality Macleod took just a single flying lap to hit the front and stayed there as the stoppages took their toll. Macleod’s 1m58.5s effort was 0.8s slower than the morning session’s best but proved unbeatable regardless.
The first stoppage occurred when the Bridger Motorsport Honda NSX found its way into the gravel. Running resumed with 40 minutes left but the red flags flew again soon after when the #25 Century BMW GT3 shed a wheel. Then there was one final pause when the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari suffered a technical issue on its out-lap.
That all left only nine minutes of running, with nobody dislodging the Optimum McLaren. Jonny Adam got closest in the Blackthorn Aston Martin he shares with Giacomo Petrobelli, missing out by 0.078. Tillbrook and Kirchhöfer were third ahead of the Barwell Lamborghini of Rob Collard and Hugo Cook and the Beechdean Aston Martin shared by Andrew Howard and Tom Wood.
Jack Mitchell maintained Mahiki’s GT4 streak, with the Lotus Emiras continuing to top every session here since the start of testing on Friday.
Charlie Robertson set the early pace in Century’s BMW before the first stoppage. Jack Brown then put his Optimum McLaren briefly on top soon after the restart, only to be displaced moments later by Mitchell, who stayed clear by 0.2s to seal a fourth consecutive top time for the Mahiki team.
Brown and Marc Warren were second, ahead of Harry George and Luca Hopkinson in the sister Optimum Artura. Stuart Hall and Peter Montague were fourth in the MKH Racing Aston Martin, with Seb Morris and Ed McDermott completing the top five in their Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG.
Qualifying will get underway at 16:15.