GT CUP - Round 6 - Brands Hatch
19th September 2010
Round 6 hosted on the Brands Hatch GP circuit was a shoe-in to replace the cancelled Donington round which made September a very hectic month coming just a week after the Oulton Park round.
Saturday was busy but relaxed with reasonable gaps between the 2 free practice sessions and qualifying. The extra power in the Manup Racing X-Bow came into it's own on the long straights of the GP circuit which gave Colin P3 for Class 2 and P8 overall. Ben and Peter were locked in their own little battle to take P6 & 7 in class split by just 0.05 sec.
Race 1
Colin elected to do the first race and took off at the green light in pursuit of the OMG Ferrari. The two were nose to tail for the entire 17 laps and ended P1 & 2 in class. Ben had his own battle with the very rapid BMW of Michael Symons and finished less than 1 sec behind. Peter meanwhile had his own battle with the white X-Bow of Tom Andrew and following a slight off never really had a chance to recover back.
Race 2
Following a huge off on Lap 1 at Paddock Hill Bend, Sam appeared on lap 2 in third place followed a few seconds later by Ben and with a huge gap to the next cars. The gap was good enough to ensure a spectacular result for the ABG cars but inevitably, the safety car was brought out to bunch all the cars up again. On lap 7, Sam and Ben were holding station at P2 & 3 overall. However, the BMWs of Keith Webster and Nick Foster were making up ground rather rapidly. It all changed on lap 9 as Captain Speed aka Ben Harvey was on a mission and passed Sam to take P3 which he held till lap 12 when Keith Webster got past to take the position. Ben held on to P4 and with this got P3 in Class 2. Sam unfortunately succumbed to the attentions of Gary Eastwoods Ferrari to finish P6 and P4 in Class 2. Peter's race was a mirror image of Race 1 and he got embroiled with the Andrew/Bennet Baggs/Norris Jones scrap again.
So a mixed weekend for Team ABG.
We have a week's break before heading off to the overseas round at the fabulous Spa Francorchamps circuit at the end of the month where in addition to the X-Bows, we will also be running Colin Broster's Porsche.
Images to follow.
