21st & 22nd May 2005 British GT Championship Report from Dunlop
Embassy Racing took the first race win of the team’s short history after a race where tyre tactics played a major part. As the grid formed up the track was still drying after a substantial downpour just an hour before.
It was time for a judgement call and both Scuderia Ecosse Ferraris, the LNT TVR and both team Eurotech Porsches chose intermediates. Eurotech weren’t the only ones in two minds: the pole sitting Ferrari sat on the grid on its jacks, the intermediates were taken off with slicks ready to go before, in the last few moments, the decision was made to put the inters back on. That left just the Embassy Racing Porsche and the RJN Motorsport Nissan to break the trend and both went with slicks and at the start of the race: with rain in the air, it looked a risky choice.
After Lap One it looked just plain wrong, as Neil Cunningham struggled to stay in touch with a titanic battle at the head of the race but as the race developed the tyre call was beginning to look rather less of an error of judgement, in fact the Embassy Porsche was beginning to look very quick indeed, by comparison with the remainder of the leading group and went on to make its way though the rest of the field to secure the win. In GT3, the early showing of Deverikos was enough to help Tech 9 to another class win as Piers Masarati brought the Porsche home in an impressive eighth place overall.
Race 2 The Scottish Scuderia Ecosse team secured a double win. Nathan Kinch and Andrew had a clean start- to-finish win, just ahead of their team-mates in the Ferrari of Tim Mullen and Chris Niarchos.
The Team Eurotech Porsche of Michael Caine and Mike Jordan finished the race in third place. Team Tech 9 also won the second race at Knockhill in the GT3 class. Dimitris Deverikos and Piers Masarati had great fights throughout the race and even challenged some of the GT2 cars to take an even more impressive sixth overall. The Trackspeed Porsche of David Ashburn and Fred Moss finished in second position, closely followed by the Damax Ferrari of Miles Hulford and Jamie Smyth.
Michael Butler, Dunlop Motorsport: “Again, we had no tyre dramas. It was a good battle and the first race was a great example of how critical tyre choices can be in endurance racing. We came here with a softer compound for those that wanted it to take advantage of the short laps with no high speed corners. Next weekend we go to the other extreme at Thruxton which is the hardest circuit we have from a tyre point of view.”
Race 1 Result Pos Class Drivers Car Time Laps Gap 1 GT2 Collins/Cunningham Porsche RSR 1:00:25.667 66 2 GT2 Kinch/Kirkaldy Ferrari 360 GTC 1:00:32.110 66 6.443 3 GT2 Mullen/Niarchos Ferrari 360 GTC 1:00:54.519 66 28.852 4 GT2 Jordan/Caine Porsche RS 1:01:11.567 66 45.900 5 GT2 Jones/Jones Porsche GT3 1:00:30.327 65 1 LAP 6 GT2 Hughes/Pearce TVR T400R 1:00:33.577 65 1 LAP
Race 2 Result Pos Class Drivers Car Time Laps Gap
1 GT2 Kinch/Kirkaldy Ferrari 360 GTC 1:00:38.187 67 2 GT2 Mullen/Niarchos Ferrari 360 GTC 1:00:58.152 67 19.965 3 GT2 Jordan/Caine Porsche RS 1:01:06.170 67 27.983 4 GT2 Collins/Cunningham Porsche RSR 1:01:17.419 67 39.232 5 GT2 Jones/Jones Porsche GT3 1:01:28.968 67 50.781
