Ian Loggie and Jules Gounon kept up the pace to lead the GT3 pack ahead of qualifying at Silverstone, but this time Gounon left it late to strike. And as in FP1, Team Parker Racing’s Porsche 718 Cayman held on to its top spot in GT4, but this time thanks to an impressive late stint from Dan Vaughan.
The results may look like a mirror image of FP1, but the second session was far more eventful, starting under persistent rain and ending under improved conditions. That led to a furry of improvements and a constantly shifting leaderboard.
Raffaele Marciello once again led the way early on in the RAM Racing Mercedes-AMG he shares with John Ferguson, before Ross Gunn put his and Andrew Howard’s Beechdean Aston Martin Vantage AMR ahead before Marciello retaliated, setting two more laps good enough for top spot before handing across to Ferguson.
Things stayed relatively static until the track conditions began to improve in the final third. Gounon got back into the 2 Seas Mercedes-AMG and closed the gap to Marciello to just 0.030s, before a superb effort from Scott Malvern put the returning Team Parker Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R past both.
Not satisfied with his run, Gounon went again, and this time carved half a second out of Malvern’s benchmark. Marciello could well have gone even better, but traffic cost him and left him second, with Gunn shuffling the Malvern/Nick Jones Porsche down to fourth late on.
Sam and Richard Neary were fifth fastest and top in Silver-Am, ahead of Alexander West and Marvin Kirchhöfer’s Garage 59 McLaren.
There was similar turbulence in GT4, with the class lead changing several times across the opening half before Vaughan and Zac Meakin again emerged out front for Team Parker.
In the wettest conditions, Academy Motorsport’s brace of Ford Mustangs went well, with Eric Evans leading the times early on in the #61. Stuart Middleton took a turn at the top in Raceway Motorsport’s Ginetta G56 before Josh Rowledge snuck past in the DTO McLaren and then the second Mustang driven by Matt Nicoll-Jones then set the pace.
And then came Vaughan, who first put the Porsche fastest with a quarter of the session gone, some two seconds up on the opposition. Others pressed hard as the times tumbled, with Nicoll-Jones briefly returning to the front, only for Meakin to further lower the benchmark during his turn. When Vaughan returned for one final run and set two further fastest times it was game over, with the Porsche running almost 1.7s up the road.
Jack Brown and Charles Clark recovered from their FP1 electrical gremlins to wind up second in their Optimum McLaren Artura, with Seb Hopkins/Josh Miller’s R Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR third. Moore/Nicoll-Jones were fourth, with Lewis Plato/Carl Cavers’ Century BMW M4 fifth and Rowledge/Aston Millar sixth for DTO.