Trackside: British GT @ Oulton Park 2023
With the motorsport season kicking off again for 2023, British GT headed to Oulton Park for its usual Easter Bank Holiday opening round. As always we headed over to be trackside in what turned into a wet and windy 2 races. That’s always the risk of an early Easter Holiday. But it made for a fantastic opening round of the championship.
The opening race was led from the start by the DK Engineering/ 2 Seas Mercedes AMG GT3 of James Cottingham and Jonny Adam. after some battling further back in the field, they had pulled an impressive lead. While Andrew Howard in the Beechdean Aston Martin GT3 forged his way up to 3rd from a 6th place starting position. Once Ross Gunn was in that became 2nd, after having an almighty duel with Marcus Clutton in the Enduro Motorsport Mclaren 720s GT3 who ended up 3rd.
The win was taken by Johnny Adam in his 100th British GT race. But Ross Gunn made him work for it, the last corner of the last lap, both almost ended up in the gravel, as Gunn took the Aston around the outside and for a second, into the lead. The rain though had been coming down, and the track was getting pretty wet now. As you can guess slick tyres and a wet track = no grip. How both stayed on track I don’t know. But they did.
Race 2 was a much more sombre affair, The rain was much more persistent from start to finish, and the wind had picked up. Jules Gounon made a flying start from p1 in the second 2 Seas AMG GT3, pulling a massive gap over Raffaele Marciello in the Ram Racing AMG GT3. Ian Loggie took over from Gounon and maintained a healthy lead for the win over John Ferguson in the Ram AMG. While a distant 3rd was Marvin Kirchhofer in the Garage 59 Mclaren 720s GT3 although that turned into hard work as James Cottingham hunted down Alex West after taking over from Johnny Adam in the DK/2 Seas AMG.
GT4 was an intense race in race 1, as Acadamy with the Mustangs started from the pit lane on slicks. Outpacing everyone who started on wets, and stormed to victory. Followed up by Raceway with the Ginetta G56 and Century with the new BMW M4 GT4. Race 2 was an all McLaren Artura GT4 affair, as the new GT4 contender locked out the top 3 places. With Race Lab taking the win, Optimum second, and DTO placing third.
British GT once again put on a great show, even with the crap weather, the crowd was sizeable. It’s definitely taken a step up over the last few years, and hopefully, that will continue.
We are off to Spa in a few weeks, and then Silverstone, so keep an eye out for more trackside blog posts.
Gallery
Race Results: Here
Disclaimer: We are not associated with the MSA, SRO, or British GT, any teams taking part or any sponsors of the event.
