So Nearly For Nearys As Clutton Steals Dramatic Donington GT Cup Win
Marcus Clutton denied Richard Neary a double victory as the JMH Automotive Lamborghini driver and John Seale grabbed a dramatic late GT Cup Championship win from their Mercedes rivals at Donington Park.
Clutton finally grabbed a long overdue win with Seale after wearing down Sam Neary's heroic defence in the endurance race, denying Team Abba Racing a double after Richard Neary's Sprint race success.
Double wins elsewhere went the way of Jim Geddie in their GTC Lamborghini, as well as the impressive Saxon Motorsport BMW of Tom Barrow and the title-defending JMH McLaren 570 of John Whitehouse and Steve Ruston, who took wins in GTB and GTH respectively.
Two close contests in GTA went the way of Ginetta G55 teams, with Team HARD dominating the opener before losing out to rivals Century Motorsport in the second contest of the day.
Qualifying
Early warning shots were fired in the short and sharp 15-minute qualifying session when Sam Neary took the Mercedes AMG GT3 around Donington in the fastest time of the morning. His 1m27.4s effort was enough to grab pole position in class and overall for the sprint race, beating the Aston Martin of Ultimate Speed’s Matt Manderson.
The GTC class was much more closely contested, with the Scott Sport Lamborghini beating its sister Ferrari thanks to the best lap of experienced Jim Geddie, bettering Snetterton star Dhillon. Team HARD took a brace of class pole positions in GTB - with Ben Clayden in their championship-leading Porsche 997 - and GTA, Joshua Jackson pipping Callum Jenkins’ sister Ginetta G55. JHM Automotive’s McLaren 570 claimed pole in GTH.
Sprint Race
Richard Neary took control of the pole-sitting Mercedes for the 25-minute Sprint later that afternoon, and fended off the early attack of Manderson’s Aston Martin into Redgate. The gap ebbed and flowed, but Neary was able to stretch his legs in the final stages of the race to take the team’s first victory of the season by 5.6s over Manderson and Seale’s Lamborghini rounding out the GT3 top three.
GTC enjoyed a tense early scrap between the top two in qualifying, with the returning James Webb in the mix in his Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo. Webb challenged but retired late on, while Jim Geddie snatched the class win from Dhillon’s Ferrari in the second half of the race.
GTH was topped throughout by the flying McLaren of John Whitehouse in a lights-to-flag performance, while GTB was a more open affair. Saxon Motorsport’s BMW 150 GTR shone in the hands of Tom Barrow, climbing ahead of the Team HARD Porsche to beat the Topcats Marcos Mantis of Jensen Lunn to the class victory.
GTA was an equally tight squabble, this time among Ginettas. Contact from team-mate Jenkins spun Simon Orange into the gravel at McLeans and handed the edge to its sister cars, Jenkins making his move on Patrick Collins to grab the win. The winning car was excluded from the results however, handing Collins class success.
Endurance Race
The 50-minute pit stop race was a much closer affair. A poor start for Richard Neary put the Mercedes on the back foot early on as Manderson’s Aston Martin made an early bid for freedom. A move for second by Neary gave the Abba team hope once again, but a lunge at the hairpin ended in contact that put them into the lead before the mandatory stops.
It positioned the car at the head of an intense chase when Sam Neary took over the Sprint race-winning car, with Clutton the danger man jumping into the JMH Lamborghini vacated by Seale. Clutton set fastest times to close the gap to nothing with less than 10 minutes on the clock, after which Neary defended superbly up until the penultimate lap when Clutton finally cut inside his rival heading out of Redgate.
GT3 and overall honours went to Clutton who lifted the monkey from his back with Seale adding to his GT Cup win tally, while Jim and Glynn Geddie combined to double Scott Sport’s GTC class wins tally of the day after coming through an epic early battle with Webb and Dhillon once more.
GTA was open throughout, with Team HARD initially leading the way before the similar G55 of Century Motorsport carved its way to the front with experienced youngster James Kellett for success. GTH again went the way of JMH Automotive’s McLaren with Steve Ruston joining Whitehouse to double up, as did the excelling Saxon Motorsport BMW team with Barrow behind the wheel once more.
#55 Marcus Clutton:
“It was a really good race. We had strong pace straight out of the box and the little contact between the leaders may have helped me out a bit. I anticipated Sam’s pace being quicker, so I put my head down and caught him, but he drove so well. I’ve never seen a Mercedes driven that wide in my life and he managed to stop my cutbacks every time. We were tussling and I finally got the cut inside. Great racing!”
#8 Sam Neary:
“It was a great race really, but just a shame about the end result for us to miss out. I couldn’t really do much against his speed on the straights, but I hung on as best I could and that’s just racing. It was a great battle and Marcus was very clean and very fair throughout, so although I wish it was us out front, I feel we gave each other space. I could have easily come back a few times but it was not worth the risk and we had a great race. Richard’s done well today as well getting a win, and hopefully we can get some more good results off the back of that.”
#20 Tom Barrow:
“It’s been a really good day so far. We’ve showed good performance in our first showing of the year since the restart from Covid-19, so it’s nice for us to be straight out there on the pace. The team’s worked really hard trying to find some improvements and give the car more balance. It’s obviously worked, and we feel the car is already better to drive, so we’ll keep up the good work hopefully tomorrow.”
#1 Steve Ruston:
“So far so good. We spent a few days testing here earier int he week so we’re a lot more confident in the car around Donington now. We’ve still been chipping away and finding more in the car as we go, but so far it’s been good. I thnk we’re definitely faster here than we were last year and that is more down to knowing about the car a lot more, and everything we’ve worked on. The key is that we spent time working on it here, and Martin Plowman has been helping us as we did over 370km testing to be sure!”
