Topcats and Abba Boss Brands in Thrilling Opening Day of Racing
Topcats Racing's Tom Rawlings claimed a rare overall victory for a GTC entry, while Team Abba Racing's Richard Neary and Ian Loggie took a dominant Pitstop Race win in the first day of GT Cup's annual trip to Brands Hatch.
Topcats was on the pace from the very start of the opening day's running as Rawlings pipped Loggie to pole before converting it into a comfortable Sprint Race success as he and Charlotte Gilbert picked up a brace of GTC victories with a Group win in the Pitstop Race.
Neary and Loggie's Enduro success added another GTO win to the latter's triumph in the first race of the day - but was ran close by a hard-charging Richard Chamberlain.
GTH had honours shared as Mikey Porter converted pole to victory for Forsetti Motorsport in the opener, before Ray Harris took a win on his debut for Driven Performance Engineers in the Pitstop encounter.
G-Cat Racing took an overall podium in the second race, and a double in Group GT3. Jolt Racing doubled up in GTA.
Qualifying
Tom Rawlings made the most of the slippery Topcats Racing Lamborghini Super Trofeo - with the power of a GT3 but not as much downforce - to prevail in a captivating back-and-forth with Ian Loggie in the Team Abba Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Rawlings hit the top first in his purple and yellow machine, before Loggie struck back with a 1m27.015sec as his Pirelli tyres got up to temperature. He wasn't top for long though, as the Lamborghini racer hit back with a 1m26.948sec - an advantage of just 0.067sec.
Third, having topped the session in the opening minutes, was Richard Chamberlain in his fire-spitting Porsche 935 who shares the second row with the G-Cat Racing Porsche 911 GTR which took GT3 pole.
A red flag curtailed any further improvements, with barrier damage needing to be repaired for an incident involving Steve Burgess' Tim Gray Motorsport Radical RXC.
Mikey Porter left no doubt as to who was going to be on top in GTH, as he left the field chasing their tails in his Forsetti Motorsport Aston Martin. He was 1.471sec ahead of Charles Dawson in the Team Parker Racing Mercedes-AMG.
Jolt Racing rounded out the pole-sitters with the honours in Group GTA.
Sprint Race
The opening race of the weekend proved to be a display of Rawlings' dominance in the Topcats Lamborghini.
From pole, the Super Trofeo was untouchable as he showed fellow front-row starter Loggie a clean pair of heels and disappeared into the wooded-splendour of the Brands Hatch Grand Prix Loop.
His eventual winning margin, which topped 11 seconds, was assisted by a captivating battle for second overall - and the lead of Group GTO - between Loggie and CTR Developments' Richard Chamberlain.
Chamberlain, in his legendary orange Porsche 935, was all over the back of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and trying everything to try and squeeze his way through. Loggie, though, hasn't collected the silverware that sits in his trophy cabinet by just giving in. The Team Abba Racing driver widened out his car as much as he could and held on to take the Group victory.
It was a Topcats 1-2 in GTC, with Warren Gilbert holding off Miles Rudman to ensure the best possible result for the Lamborghini squad.
GT3 success, and fourth overall, went to Shamus Jennings who was part of a second great battle round the Kent circuit as he held his nerve in a dice with Paul Bailey in the returning Brabham BT62.
Defending champion Bailey had a few good runs to try and steal away the position - including what looked like a done deal going into Druids - but Jennings wasn't to be cowed and held his nerve to the flag. Bailey took the final spot on the GTO podium.
Mikey Porter converted his remarkable speed in Qualifying to remarkable speed in the race as he powered the Forsetti Vantage to a comfortable win in GTH, but the real story was in second as Ray Harris powered his Ginetta into the runner-up spot and ahead of Charles Dawson's Parker Mercedes.
GTA was secured by Rupert Williams for Jolt.
Pitstop Race
Compared to the early race, Richard Neary & Loggie blitzed the 40-minute pit-stop race - cut down slightly because of earlier delays.
Neary took the start from third, and picked his way first past Richard Chamberlain - who was slightly delayed battling with pole-sitter Charlotte Gilbert - and then Gilbert herself as the Mercedes looked to be flying.
He disappeared up the road, handing team-mate Loggie a lead that had quickly extended to over 20 seconds come the halfway mark. The Scot took the wheel and scythed his way through traffic to take overall and GTO success by 15.799sec.
Paul Bailey & David Brabham were unfortunate not to take second overall to add to second in Group. Bailey had a great opening stint but was held up by a battling Chamberlain, but when he handed over to the BT62's namesake the timing screens lit up.
Setting a lap record of 1m23.549sec, Brabham cut down his deficit to Greg Caton but ran out of laps to make a move on the G-Cat racer, as the latter took GT3 honours and second overall.
Taking a double was Tom Rawlings, who joined up with Charlotte Gilbert to secure a third enduro victory of the season for Topcats as Rawlings caught and passed Miles Rudman to take another top spot in GTC.
In GTH, it was yet another demonstration of how the Ginetta G55 might be long in the tooth but its still a weapon in the right hands as Ray Harris held off a late charge from Team Parker's Seb Morris to take a maiden Group victory for his Driven Performance Engineers team.
#2 Tom Rawlings
“Yeah it's really good, proper connected round the back, which is I think where people are losing their time at the minute. We just seem to get into a rhythm, and once we’re in it, it just keeps pulling and pulling, it’s really good. I thought we were going to have a bit of trouble off of the Merc [Ian Loggie]- I thought we’d be alright for three or four laps, but I thought he’d still be there, I didn’t think we’d pull that much [of a gap]."
#1 David Brabham
“It’s always special to drive here, what with the name Brabham Straight and what my dad achieved here. And yeah, I think we achieved the best we could with the time penalties we have in the pit stops. Having not driven the Grand Prix track since 1995, I’m still trying to find my way around a little bit. The car was behaving really nicely, and I was just getting faster and faster as I was learning. Pretty pleased considering, with the pitstop penalty it makes it a little more challenging but it’s a great fight to get as much as we can out of it. If there’s a safety car at any point, that might help us, but I’m pleased for the team and Paul did a great job getting us into P2 at the pitstop – it’s been a good weekend so far and a good haul of points.
#12 Miles Rudman
“It was a really good day, steady race I guess but just did my best and really enjoyed it. I got my head down and the Lamborghinis are a bit further ahead on power so just did the best that I can really. I feel really good in the Porsche, I feel like I'm extracting near-enough the most out of it as I can. I can't get any more out of it otherwise I start over-driving but I'm enjoying it and the car's really good to drive."
#25 Ray Harris
“It was good fun that one [the Pitstop Race], hard-going 40 minutes on my own but it was good. I did a two-hour race a few weeks ago so it wasn't as tough as that, but it was fun! These guys, I could see them in the mirrors at the start but I could see they had longer stops so that gave me some breathing space."
