With the summer break now over and four rounds and eight races to go the GT Cup Championship is looking highly competitive and very finely poised. This is ‘multi-marque’ GT racing at its best.. fabulous cars, big grids and close racing. This will be a multi million pound car grid jammed packed with over 30 eye wateringly stunning cars from Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, BMW, Marcos, TVR, Ginetta and KTM.
The cars run in three Groups with the quicker cars in Group One and the ‘less quick’ (there are no slow cars in GT Cup!) running in Group Three. The Groups are determined by a combination of a power to weight formula and the overall specifications of the cars. ‘Professional’ drivers are not allowed into the Championship and all the cars run on Pirelli Tyres, Pirelli being the sole tyre supplier to the Championship.
The overall title is beginning to look like a straight fight between Keith Webster and his BMW M3 on 204 points and Alex Martin and his Porsche 997 GT3 with 202 points. But Marco Pullen in his Group Two Ferrari 360 GTC is not far off with 175 points and a ‘charge’ over the next few rounds will put him right in the frame to win the Championship. So there is everything to play for at Oulton Park and with three rounds to go after this round none of the front runners can afford to make even the smallest mistake and drop any vital points.
In Group One Alex Martin in his Porsche GT3 Cup car has, what should be, a reasonable margin ahead of the two Ferraris of Gary Eastwood and Leon Price. Martin goes into this round with a 27 point advantage over the ever improving Gary Eastwood in his Ferrari 430 GTC. The pressure is on Alex Martin since the highly spectacular and mighty rapid Danny Winstanley in his TVR Tuscan will be back in action with a revitalised engine and the equally rapid Chris Randall in his Lotus Europa will be out to carry on where he left off at Brands Hatch.
In Group Two Keith Webster in his BMW M3 has 19 point lead over Marco Pullen and his Ferrari 360 GTC. Marco has proved his is a race winner in the past and there are still several rounds to go. The leading bunch in Group Two have given us some spectacular and very tight racing and while David Back in his Ferrari 360 GTC may not be in the overall points battle he will no doubt be mixing it with the front runners. But we can’t overlook Michael Symons who is lying 3rd in Group T just 7 points behind Pullen.
Group Three things are beginning to heat up between Tom Andrew in his KTM XBow and Dan Norris-Jones in his Lotus Exige. In the early part of the season things went Tom Andrew’s way but Norris-Jones has found some more pace and is now confident he can take on the KTM XBow and win the Group. He is now only 11 points behind and could grab the lead if Tom Andrew makes the smallest mistake! They crossed the line at Brands a few feet apart !
Both races have a ‘rolling start’ so a good place to watch could be where the cars stream around Old Hall and head off down The Avenue towards Cascades..
