Two weeks on from Michael Lyons’ fantastic win in the Avon Tyres British GT round at Donington Park, the 20-year old Essex-based professional racing driver was back on track with a possible chance of the championship for the last round at Silverstone.
Lyons was taking part in the final round of the British Championship for Scuderia Vittoria in the Ferrari GT3 458 and both Michael and his team were looking forward to this event, which happily gave them the opportunity of securing the Championship in their first year of racing at this level.
Friday practice bought with it a myriad of set up issues, which had to be worked through before the qualifying and racing – all on the Saturday – including a broken floor. Happily solutions were found and by the time of qualifying on Saturday morning, Lyons was on the pace. As his teammate took to the seat for the majority of the qualifying the times quickly sped up and this left them down in 10th at the end of the session with a 2:04:964.
As the endurance race started on the Sunday, Michael’steammate started first with a grey, cloudy and menacingbackdrop. The weather though fortunately held through out the race leaving the track dry and the excitement to come from elsewhere. After an electric start, the no.5 Ferrari was up into 2nd place and fighting the guest Audi R8 for the lead. After the race settled down, the Audi built a gap to Lyons’ teammate. Although a guest car it was eligible for points, which meant that the main competition in the other Ferrari now needed to finish 5thor lower to guarantee the Championship. This scenario is exactly what was transpiring and all looked good.
When Michael jumped into the 458 Ferrari GT3 car at half distance all was looking good for a stunning finish to the year. Then, it all went awry – as is the way with motorsport from time to time. A safety car was bought out to recover a car and in the confusion the safety car picked up the wrong two cars – mistakenly thinking they were the leaders. Unfortunately Michael was one of these two cars and while the rest of the pack was forming a queue behind the safety car, Michael in the Ferrari and the Audi had to slowly drive around the circuit to catch the back of the safety car train. By the time they had caught up, they were at the back of the line although still showing as third on track with all the cars in between the leaders and Michael showing as lapped cars.
This meant that Michael had to pass all of these cars and then try and catch the leaders. This also meant that the main competition was now ahead of him, making the championship a difficult objective.
Within minutes Michael also received a drive through penalty for using the kerbs too much. Although now down in 10th this allowed Michael to show what a good sports car driver he has matured into during his first year in this type of cars, by cutting through the traffic with just the right amount of aggression and precision and moving back up to 7th, where he would stay until the race ended. This meant Michael finished an astonishing 3rd in the championship with 116.5 points in his first year of GT racing.
After the race Michael said;
“What a race! So many ups and downs. At one point, I really thought we might do it, but obviously didn’t want to say that out loud!”
“Ultimately, it was a bit deflating immediately after the race, but when I look now, I realise what an amazing year we’ve had. To finish 3rd in the championship in the first year and win two races too, is really good, and I was really pleased with my personal performance.”
“Now we head into the winter, but for me it doesn’t mean it all stops. We need to finalise plans for next year, but I would love to come back to British GT and with the championship! Let’s see.”
The Avon Tyres British GT championship has now finished for the year, but Michael will be keeping busy in the Winter with racing in other categories such as historic F1 and F5000.
