Greystone GT enjoyed another ultra-successful weekend by scoring three GT Cup podium finishes from four races held at Snetterton, Norfolk, last weekend.
Phillip Carter and Michael Broadhurst scored the Silverstone-based team’s strongest result of the event with second place in class in Sunday’s Pitstop Race while Mark Hopton and Euan Hankey twice finished third on Saturday.
Both Phillip and Mark; the Sporting Drivers in the #14 and #77 Greystone GT McLaren 570S GT4s, had enjoyed breakthrough results at the previous event at Brands Hatch; Phillip and Michael scoring a maiden podium in the GTH class and Mark and Euan a first win.
Those results seemed to inspire both to new levels of performance at Snetterton; Mark equalling his career-best sixth place in qualifying and Phillip matching that result for his best-ever grid spot.
A supremely consistent Sprint Race drive on Saturday brought Derby racer Mark third place in the class for GT4 cars - his maiden solo podium finish - and a similarly confident performance brought him to second spot in the Pitstop Race by the end of his opening stint.
Sadly for Mark and pro co-driver Euan, they had to serve a 20-second success penalty at their mandatory driver change - a series regulation imposed on them as winners of the previous Pitstop Race, but Euan charged back from seventh to secured third spot.
Mark was fifth in Sunday’s Sprint Race while Euan set the fastest GTH lap in the Pitstopper as the pair finished fourth.
That was two places behind Phillip, who drove superbly to finish a career-best second with pro racer Michael after both put in impressively consistent weekend-long performances to build on the former’s first podium finish at Brands Hatch.
Phillip, from York, had himself qualified a career-best seventh on Saturday and then improved by a spot the following day. A fifth and two fourths before Sunday’s podium means he and Michael are now fifth in the GTH points - one spot behind Mark and Euan.
American Ron Trenka was another to enjoy a breakthrough weekend in his rookie season in UK motorsport. The New York-based racer qualified a career-best 12th in GTH on Sunday morning and also recorded his best-ever solo result with 10th in the second Sprint Race.
He and his pro co-driver Jon Lancaster, from Leeds, were again in the thick of the action in the pair of Pitstop Races and scored their best combined finish too as the duo took seventh in Saturday’s Pitstopper.
Ron will miss the next round at Oulton Park before returning with Jon at Silverstone in July.
Iain Campbell made history on Sunday morning by qualifying second overall to achieve Greystone GT’s first front-row start in any GT Cup class, and at the same track where almost exactly a year earlier he’s scored the team’s maiden podium finish.
But the Sandhurst racer endured a luckless weekend. Hit from behind less than two corners into Saturday’s opener by a driver that was later disqualified from the whole weekend for his on-track conduct, Iain slid into a different car and was eliminated.
That put he and pro co-driver Oli Webb at the back of the grid for the first Pitstop Race, in which - further delayed by a 10s success penalty from their Brands Hatch podium - they recovered to fifth in GT3 aboard their McLaren 720S GT3.
Further opening-lap incidents in both of Sunday’s races meant two more sevenths were as good as it got; but the determination shown by both did, at least, enable them to maintain fourth in the GT3 points as the midway point of the season nears.
Mark McLoughlin, Team Principal, said: “We’ve scored three podiums from four races for a second-straight GT Cup weekend and that’s clear sign of the new levels of confidence all our Sporting Drivers are bringing to the table in 2022. Seeing your drivers score career-best result after career-best result is just great for all of us here and shows that the way we’re doing things is really working. While all went well with our GTH cars, I’m absolutely gutted for Iain and Oli at the way their weekend went. Iain’s ever-improving speed was clear for everyone to see with his fantastic performance in qualifying on Sunday, but the contact he received on Saturday put the #23 crew on the back foot and set the tone for an unlucky event.”
