Greystone GT claimed a top-10 finish at Donington Park as drivers Andrey Borodin and Oli Webb made their British GT Championship return at the opening round of the season last weekend.
The duo, who last competed full-time in the series in 2023, finished 10th in the GT3 Pro-Am category aboard their McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, but were denied the chance of placing higher due to an unfortunately-timed Safety Car during the opening stint.
Having warmed-up for the weekend by contesting the GT Cup event seven days previously – a meeting that included Andrey’s best-ever laptimes of Donington’s Grand Prix layout – the team took to the track early on Saturday.
While practice and qualifying resulted in 12th place on the Pro-Am grid, a number of overnight set-up changes improved the McLaren’s handling and enabled Knutsford racer Oli to set the second-best time in Sunday warm-up.
Andrey made a clean getaway to the afternoon’s two-hour race and settled into a comfortable rhythm as he looked to take advantage of any mistakes made by his rivals.
Unfortunately, one such mistake made by another car was to severely hamper his progress.
A two-car incident triggered the Safety Car at the 45-minute mark. Crucially, Andrey’s track position at the precise moment the field was frozen meant that he lost effectively a whole lap on every other GT3 car, making a fightback impossible.
While Oli charged hard after climbing aboard at the mid-race driver changes, the gap created artificially by the safety car was too great to overcome, meaning that despite penalties for several rivals, 10th in Pro-Am was the maximum achievable.
The next round of the championship takes place at Silverstone, Greystone GT’s home circuit, on April 26-27.
Mark McLoughlin, Team Principal, said: “It was good for the team to complete a clean and incident-free run in the opening round of British GT. We might have had a better result than 10th in Pro-Am, but the timing of the safety car was unfortunate. The team have done an excellent job, and will be working hard to make some improvements in time for the next race at Silverstone; our home track.”
