Greystone GT drivers produced one of the team’s best-ever International GT Open qualifying performances at Barcelona while the Silverstone-based team were also in action at the final round of the British GT Championship.
International GT Open
McLaren factory driver Dean MacDonald scored the team’s best qualifying result of the season with second overall for Saturday’s opening race in the #33 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, though the race would not deliver the result he or co-driver James Kell deserved.
Dean, from Kelty, ran solidly inside the top three for most of the opening stint, but a five-second success handicap – awarded as per series rules for having finished third last time out in Austria meant James resumed in fourth spot.
As he had done at the Red Bull Ring the Morpeth racer chased down the cars ahead and looked set to challenge for second and third positions until with just two laps to go he was hit from from behind and spun into retirement.
While the driver responsible – Marcos Siebert – was penalised 20 seconds for the incident, the hard work of Dean, James and the Greystone GT team ultimately went unrewarded.
It was a similar story on Sunday when James was forced to retire 20 minutes in due to a fluid leak.
Aberdeen-based duo Stewart and Lewis Proctor claimed a hard-fought fifth spot in Pro-Am on Sunday; a testament to a long opening stint by the latter and his fast pace on old tyres, a slick pitstop by the Greystone GT crew, and some tenacious driving by Stewart.
It made up for the #66 McLaren’s cruel elimination from the early stages of Saturday’s race when Stewart was tapped into a spin from behind and collected side-on by another car with enough force to break his suspension.
Oli Webb secured the best qualifying result of the season for the #24 McLaren the British racer shares with Andrey Borodin.
Second in Pro-Am on Saturday morning, the Knutsford racer ran strongly inside the top three in the category through the opening stint. Andrey took over and came home 15th in class.
Andrey produced one of his finest performances to date in Race Two; moving up from his grid position with a well-judged drive to enter the pit window 14th in class. Oli took over and impressively set the best Pro-Am lap of the race – and the third-best overall.
Unfortunately a safety-car period declared with 10 minutes to go denied him the chance to pass a four-car group he had just caught rapidly.
One round remains of the championship; a two-hour endurance race at Monza, Italy, in just under three weeks’ time.
British GT Championship
The season concluded not – as has become traditional – at Donington Park, but at Kent’s magnificent Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit as Mike Price and Callum Macleod continued their strong late-season form.
Having put the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 a best-ever fourth on the starting grid at Donington three weeks previously, Mike and Callum this time combined to line up eight in Pro-Am for Sunday’s two-hour race.
Mike maintained position for most of the opening hour-long stint, though with several incidents causing all but three minutes of the second hour to be run at slow speeds under either Full-Course Yellow or Safety Car conditions, there were few, if any opportunities, for Pro racer Callum to make progress.
Sixth in Pro-Am marked a solid end to what has been a much-improved second year in Britain’s premier GT racing series; Mike and Callum taking seventh in the Pro-Am standings and Greystone GT securing eighth in the overall Teams’ Championship.
Mark McLoughlin, Team Principal, said: “It’s been one of those weekends when the results sheets don’t show how strong our performances have been both in GT Open and in British GT. For Dean and Oli to both qualify second in their classes at Barcelona is great and I’m disappointed for Dean and James to lose a podium in what were quite cruel circumstances. Stewart showed resilience under pressure when defending on Sunday and both Mike and Andrey have done well too over a weekend when safety cars took away a lot of potential racing. Thanks to the British GT crew for a strong job this year as we look ahead to the GT Open finale in a few weeks’ time.”
