GT CUP - Round 5 - Oulton Park
11th September 2010
Team ABG arrived with a full compliment of 3 X-Bows for this one day round at Oulton with Peter Belshaw making his X-Bow debut in the Times Motorsport car.
With no free practice session for this event, we went straight into qualifying at 09.00 on a damp but drying track. While the majority of cars played safe and went out on wets, the ABG cars all took to the circuit on slicks. As the track dried, our cars crept to the top of the timesheets on nicely warmed up slicks and with 4 minutes of the session remaining, we were running in P2, P3 and P4 overall. However by this time the fast boys had also changed to slicks and with a completely dry track they all banged in their quick times. In spite of this, Colin still claimed pole for Class 2 with Ben and Peter taking P6 and P8 respectively.
Race 1
Colin made his now customary lightning start and was running comfortably in the top six overall and leading Class 2 until he got caught up in the carnage caused by the oil deposited from Craig Wilkin’s disintegrating gearbox. The safety car bunched the cars back together, but Colin had lost too many places to maximise on his excellent start. Ben drove a good strong race too and kept David Back’s Ferrari between him and Peter Belshaw to the end of the race.
Race 2
Grid positions for this race was determined by second quickest qualifying times and this put Ben on Row 3 right next to Sam with Peter on Row 7. Sam made the jump on Ben and was lapping consistently until lap 11 when he retired after loosing his clutch. Ben drove a very steady race but had Peter snapping at his heels as the race progressed. Peter made good progress and finished 0.8 seconds behind Ben. His efforts were rewarded by posting the fastest lap for Class 2.
So a slightly disappointing weekend for team ABG!
Images from the event below courtesy of New World Motorsport.
