Race Report for Qualifying One
Chamberlain claims first pole of the weekend
The sun shone through Silverstone’s broken clouds for the GT Cup’s first qualifying session on Saturday morning. Spots of rain threatened ahead of the green flag, but proved to be a false alarm.
John Seale in the JMH Lamborghini got off to a good start, setting provisional pole with a 2:06.668 ahead of Richard Chamberlain and James Webb.
The times tumbled throughout and with just three minutes to go, Chamberlain set a new fastest lap of 2:01.634. Good enough for pole, but not by much. The Porsche sits just three-hundredths of a second ahead of Seale’s Lamborghini. Third on the grid and splitting the GTO field is James Webb, thanks to a 2:04.211.
Second and third in GTC went to Ferraris, but these horse are from two different stables. Both FF Corse and AF Corse were in attendance this weekend, but it was FF Corse who drew first blood. Though all five Ferraris were bested by the lone Lamborghini. The #19 FF Corse 488 in the hands of Dan de Zille claimed second in GTC with the #16 AF Corse 488 of Paul Hogarth finishing third quickest.
Returners Balfe Motorsport threw down the gauntlet early in the session and proved to be unbeatable. A 2:15.111 from Nick Moss in the #25 McLaren puts them on GTH pole and ahead of Chris Murphy’s Aston Martin and John Whitehouse’s McLaren.
In GTB, Top Cats Racing set provisional pole early on, but couldn’t keep ahold of the position. WDC Racing snatched the fastest time from the Marcos Mantis, relegating it to second quickest. Third fastest in GTB went the way of Stanbridge Motorsport in the hands of James Simons, running the car on his own this weekend.
Group GTA’s polesitter is the highly appropriate GTA Motorsport. The Porsche Cayman in the hands of Ivan Milutinovic beat their only GTA rival, Team Hard’s Nick Scott-Dickeson, to group pole.
