Glory for Greystone as Gilbert and Bradley Yates romp to Silverstone GT Cup 100 success
Greystone GT christened its McLaren 720S GT3's GT Cup Championship season debut weekend with a mighty win in Sunday's Silverstone 100 spectacular (2 August).
Father-son pairing Bradley and Gilbert Yates got the job done across the 100-minute contest in Northampton, while successes were also shared across the groups by Truemix Racing, Triple M Motorsport, SVG Motorsport and Raceworks Motorsport.
Qualifying
With 100 minutes of racing action ahead, Qualifying was crucial for crews to get themselves toward the sharp-end of the grid and make the best start possible.
Competition for overall honours was a battle between JMH Automotive's Peter Erceg and the Team BRIT BMW M4 GT3 of Jamie Falvey. The latter struck first, and was looking strong in his lead position but as the session built to a climax Erceg was increasingly dialled in behind the wheel of his Audi R8 LMS and was taking chunks off the deficit every time across the line.
Despite his best efforts, Falvey prevailed to lock out the top spot with Erceg just 0.078sec behind.
The JMH squad generally were on fine form, as their GTC Lamborghini Super Trofeo driven by Frank Morris and James Pickford stormed to the Group pole and third overall, besting returning champ Fraser Fenwick in the Topcats Racing Lamborghini.
Even tighter than the battle for GT3 pole was the scrap for GTH, which involved three teams and two manufacturers. SVG Motorsport and Innovation Racing's Ginettas swapped places throughout with the Sam Maher-Loughnan-driven Oselli Motorsport Aston Martin.
It was the latter who looked to have finished the session with the top spot safely his, but Cameron Pratt-Thompson was motoring in the SVG Ginetta G56 and in the closing minutes he squeezed ahead with a 2m10.416sec, just 0.038sec ahead of Oselli. Innovation was close to upsetting them both, but its Ginetta was a further 0.044sec back in third to set-up a grandstand GT Cup 100.
Tom Walpole proved masterful in his KTM X-BOW GT2 to take GTO pole, while it was Andrew who prevailed in the battle of the Perrys as the Raceworks Motorsport driver prevailed over Daniel in the JTM Engineering entry.
GT Cup 100
100 minutes of GT racing action commenced with the packed grid thundering into Copse corner for the first time, with Bradley Yates surprising both his GT3 rivals as he swept around the outside into the lead of the race from the second row ahead of Paul Fullick's Team BRIT BMW.
As Yates attempted to make a break up front, Greystone GT's hunt for GT3 Group success was given a huge boost by offs for both PB Racing's Audi and BRIT's BMW in a thrilling opening stint, as the title contenders were forced to recover through the field.
From that moment, the fate of the McLaren was sealed, as Gilbert Yates took over and produced a flawless stint himself to grab a victory for Greystone Racing on its GT3 machine's debut weekend. PB Racing and Team BRIT rounded out the group podium, Marcus Clutton producing an electric stint to climb from outside the top 20 to finish in the top 10 overall.
Popcorn was needed for the battle for GTC honours, meanwhile. It would turn out to be a fight for second outright, with Topcats Racing and Triple M Motorsport's Lamborghinis going at it for the group win. A strong stint by Charlie Digby for the latter ended with him nursing an issue back to the pits, but Felix Livesey made back the lost time and clawed the lead back from Fenwick, despite the latter's valiant defence.
The #4 crew also had a superb scrap for much of the first half of the race with the eventual GTO Group winners, Truemix Racing. Tom Walpole twice had to fight with way around the Lamborghini before handing over the Marc Kemp, who brought the KTM home for the group win.
GTH was another nail-biter, won right in the dying stages by SVG Motorsport's Ginetta G56. Marc Elman's clean opening stint was enough to give Cameron Pratt-Thompson an opportunity to strike, and he trimmed the gap to James Wareing and Sam Branston's Innovation Racing Ginetta to almost nothing to set up a battle to the chequered flag. The move came around the outside from the #888 entry, meaning the SVG duo claimed both this season's GT Cup 100 victories in Group GTH. Oselli Motorsport kicked on in the second half of the race, the Aston Martin duo taking third.
GTA looked like one for Innovation Racing in the early stages, but they were forced into the pits to dash their hopes entirely. It allowed another Ginetta - that of Raceworks Motorsport's Daniel Quintero and Andrew Perry - to inherit the top spot in GTA, and claim victory ahead of JTM Racing's Daniel Perry.
#95 Matt Eddolls
“The car feels properly dialled in this weekend, we did some good times in Quali and I’ve been working on my driving skill as well to try and build up my lap times. Still got some work to do on that front but happy with two podiums. There was a good number of cars on the grid in GTH, and evenly matched - the first four cars in qualifying were covered by half-a-second so it shows Balance of Peformance is about right. It was a nice competitive race.”
#1 Fraser Fenwick
“It’s great to be back, everyone is so friendly here and it’s just such a great environment to be in with a great paddock. First time driving alongside Bertie, didn’t really know what he’d done in the past but he’s got on really well with the car and it’s good to be back out in the car. The last time I was in it was October last year so it’s good to blow off the cobwebs and have a good weekend. It was a great battle with Felix Livesey, we did what we could as they went on new tyres for the second half of the race, we didn’t do that. Toward the end we started to have some overheating issues and we did what we could but really happy with the performance.”
#888 Cameron Pratt-Thompson
“I went second, and Marc did a fantastic job today to recover and keep us in the fight. We had a good pitstop and I just had to chip away at the gap, and thankfully I managed to do it and then cleared off so a good result. I could see that Innovation were trying to stop it up at every opportunity but I’ve done that move lots of times before so figured I’d send it round the outside. I had quite a lot of pace in hand so if I couldn’t do that move, I knew I could make it happen eventually.”
#95 Sam Maher-Loughnan
“I’m happy with that, we’ve been in and out this year so it’s been good. Coming here and getting two thirds was good. We’ve been struggling with the car all weekend, it felt a bit loose, but Matt has found pace this weekend and the team has done a great job throughout so all good. Matt’s excited now, so hopefully after picking up a few trophies we’ll be back for Brands Hatch and Snetterton. The car came alive at the end of the race, which is not usually what happens, it normally falls off a cliff a bit but it was good!”
