This seasons Avon Tyres British GT Championship will feature even more cars with the news today that series regulars Preci-Spark Engineering and Rosso Verde have signed up to race in 2013. Current entries for the leading national GT series are now in excess of 26 cars and this season looks set to be the best yet.
Preci-Spark Engineerings Godfrey and David Jones will contest their Mercedes AMG SLS GT3 for the third successive season and the pair have already begun their season with a strong performance in the 24 hours of Dubai in early January, claiming runner-up spot in the amateur class, and a fifth place overall finish. The 2009 Drivers Champions are in for their tenth year in the series and the pair could be joined by at least one further Mercedes entry.
Gentleman driver, Hector Lester, also returns for his tenth season of British GT with the super-fast Allan Simonsen alongside him once more. Racing again under the Rosso Verde banner, the pair will be running a Ferrari 458 Italia GT3, the car they took to two podiums in a mini 2012 campaign. Lester and Simonsen last took a victory at Donington Park in 2010, something both drivers will be keen to put right this season.
Elsewhere, series organisers SRO have made small tweaks to some of the sporting regulations, with non pro-am pairings now entirely being adjusted using weight, rather than a combination of weight and time balancing. The amendments willensure that the stable platform the series has put in place over the last three years remains and new entries joining the series receive are balanced appropriately. Adjustments for non-Pro-Am pairings are now as follows and subject to evaluation and approval from the series organisers:
GT3Silver /Silver 65KgSilver /Gold 75KgSilver /Platinum 85Kg
GT4Silver /Silver 40KgSilver /Gold 50KgSilver /Platinum 60Kg
Round one of the series is at Oulton Park in Cheshire over the Easter weekend (30/Mar-1/Apr) with ticket details and more information available on the official Championship website, http://www.BritishGT.comand on the official Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/BritishGT.
QuotesBenjamin Franassovici, Championship Manager:Were pleased to welcome back the Jones brothers and Hector and Allan; between them these two pairings have 20 years of British GT experience and theyre still quick to this day; something which is note worthy in the modern GT3 era. Were pleased to have a lot of new entries to the series this year, but crucially, we havent lost our core base, the people whove supported us when grids havent been so buoyant. Over the years weve listened to our customers and with their input weve been able to make decisions on how the series can run without alienating people. The Jones will be prime candidates for our Gentleman Cup, as will Hector. Having Allan in the Ferrari again is special and were confident well have some exciting weekends of racing for our fans this year.
