Autosport – 25 July 2019

58 AUTOSPORT.COM 25 JULY 2019

CLUB AUTOSPORT NATIONAL REPORTS

FINAL LAP DRAMA AS SMITH AND DORLIN MISS OUT AGAIN

cars, also worked in Canning’s favour.

Having lost potential victories while leading at

Silverstone (engine) and Donington (contact with

a GT3 car), Smith was determined to hold on

to the lead team-mate James Dorlin had taken

at the start. He did so until the penultimate lap,

when Canning ambushed him around the outside

at the Bus Stop. That became the inside line for

the left-hander and, as Smith attempted to cover

the line, the two cars made contact – breaking

Smith’s radiator and forcing him to stop,

although he was still classified seventh.

“I thought it was a bit unnecessary,” Canning

said of the contact. “With the straightline speed

in the McLaren he probably could have come

back at me on the straight afterwards.”

Smith retorted: “As far as I was aware I was

still in the lead. I just thought I’d been smacked

to the side and before I knew I had water all

over my tyres and there was no chance of

making it around again.”

The result stood and the Aston pair were

elevated to the lead of the GT4 Silver driver

standings and third overall, 7.5 points shy of the

summit. Behind them was the second Tolman

McLaren of Lewis Proctor and Jordan Collard,

which capitalised on the problems of their

team-mates and electrical trouble for the HHC

SPA

BRITISH GT

21 JULY

There’s nothing quite like winning to instil

confidence in a driver, so it was entirely apt

that Ollie Wilkinson should follow up his

first career victory in International GT Open

with a maiden British GT triumph one week

later at Spa alongside Bradley Ellis.

Carrying an extra 30kg aboard his

Optimum Motorsport Aston Martin

Vantage GT3 as a Silver Cup entrant,

23-year-old Wilkinson has made strong

progress in his second season of GT3

racing and when Spa’s famous microclimate

threw a curveball before qualifying, he

splashed to pole in his session by almost

half a second – a full 2.6s up on the best

different championships and winning

races is fantastic.”

But if the race was an uneventful one

for the Optimum pair, events in their

wake were anything but – so much so that,

despite their non-score at Donington Park,

they are now just 16 points behind new

championship leaders Jonny Cocker and

Sam De Haan, whose seventh place was

enough to overhaul Barwell Motorsport

team-mates Phil Keen and Adam Balon by

half a point. Barwell had conducted around

5000km of testing before the event, but it

didn’t take long before things went awry.

First, Balon had a throttle calibration

problem on the formation lap and received

a 10-second penalty when his mechanics

returned to the grid to bump-start him.

De Haan then was turned around at

Pro-Am entry – which laid the foundations

for the weekend.

Wilkinson aced the start and made no

mistakes in traffic, handing Ellis the “very

straightforward” task of seeing out the

result. It was the 2007 champion’s first

outright series win since 2008 and took

this year’s tally of winners to six different

crews in seven races. Optimum team

boss Shaun Goff was quick to hail

Wilkinson’s achievement.

“He’s just had to believe in himself really,”

said Goff. “At Hockenheim [in GT Open] we

were promoted to the Pro class due to the

lap times he was delivering in practice

and that was the turning point.

“It’s great to see the kid put in so

much effort and get the reward. Two

weekends in a row where we’re in

Ellis and Wilkinson move into title contention

ALL PICS: JEP

One round after TF Sport gave the new Aston

Martin Vantage GT3 its first British GT win at

Donington, its GT4 arm followed suit at Spa.

Tom Canning and Ash Hand delivered the

spoils – the team’s first in GT4 since Spa 2014 –

although it was not without controversy.

It came after a thrilling battle that lasted

for the final half hour of the race with Josh

Smith’s Tolman Motorsport McLaren 570S,

which used its turbo grunt to pull out a gap in

sector one before the Aston’s superior grip in

high-speed corners allowed Canning to close.

The need for the turbocharged McLaren to

fuel-save, particularly in the absence of safety