Round Eight Silverstone October 16th/17th
PREVIEW..
After a very successful and enjoyable trip to Spa Francorchamps the GT Cup returns to Silverstone for the final round of the 2010 Championship. Spa saw all the main Championship contenders experiencing various problems. Both Marco Pullen and Keith Webster ran into fuel problems and Alex Martin made contact with Gary Eastwood at the start of race one. These incidents, while they didn’t help the drivers scoring points, did however mean that there is now everything to play for at Silverstone.
With ten bonus points available for starting this round and two races there are plenty of points to be won ...or lost.
Drivers will be dropping the scores from their two lowest scoring races, this means that the current Championship leader , Marco Pullen in his #13 Ferrari 360 GTC, leads with 345 points and he can’t afford to make any mistakes since he has already dropped his two ‘dnf’ results for this year. Keith Webster is currently 2nd overall in his #10 BMW M3 E36 and he has 338 points, also taking into account dropping his two worst scores to date and likewise Alex Martin in his #87 Porsche 997 GT3 Cup car has 329 points. The challenge for all three of these drivers won’t simply be scoring points but also trying to keep out of trouble and hopefully avoid any mechanical disasters.
If things look close in the overall points battle then the class battles are just as exciting.
In Group One Alex Martin is currently leading the group with 329 points with Danny Winstanley, now driving his #78 Porsche 964 Turbo rather that the TVR, just 29 points behind. Possibly the most improved driver of the season is Gary Eastwood in his #16 Ferrari 430 GTC and his 3rd in the group just three points behind Danny Winstanley.
It is likely that the overall Championship winner will come from Group Two and it is a fairly straightforward head to head between Marco Pullen and Keith Webster. Even so one of the surprises of the season has been the #77 KTM XBow driven by the Mowle family who are 36 points behind Webster.. Amazingly Group Three is also going all the way to the line with Tom Andrew in his #7 KTM XBow with 278 points and Dan Norris-Jones 28 points behind. But with around fifty points available this weekend this could all change!
So, in it’s first season as a Championship the GT Cup arrives at Silverstone with the prospect of some very close tactical racing all the way through the field and right down to the chequered flag at race two!
