TEAM NEWS: The Barwell Motorsport British GT squad brought our win tally up to 3 victories out of 8 races contested so far this season, with the Ginetta G50Z scoring no.3 in Sunday’s encounter at Snetterton with drivers Olly Bryant and Piers Johnson. The Barwell-run Aston Martin DBRS9 of Andrew Howard and Jamie Smyth backed up this result well with fifth overall and fourth points-scoring GT3 after an excellent run on Sunday.

For most of Saturday’s 50-lap encounter, four cars were locked in a fascinating battle of wills for the overall race victory. These included the Mosler of Brown/Short, the Ascari of the Jones twins, the Ferrari of Cameron/Wilds and the Barwell G50Z of Piers and Olly. The Mosler and Ascari had put the faster driver of their pairings in for the first stint, whilst the Ferrari and Ginetta both had the slower one, resulting in the first two cars building up a handy advantage in the first half of the race. So initially at the front it was Mosler just ahead of Ascari, and then an increasing gap back to Piers and Cameron.

Piers was doing a cracking job in his first race stint for the best part of a year, fending off Cameron’s 2009 spec Ferrari 430 Scuderia in the Ginetta. Cameron seemed to have a little more pace, however, and got past Johnson going into the Esses on lap 12. Piers was then able to shadow the Ferrari for the remainder of his stint, keeping the gap down to under three seconds by the time he came in to pass the baton to Olly on lap 23.

By lap 29 all of the leading bunch had made their pit stops, and the roles were now reversed as Ferrari and Ginetta became the hunters, and Mosler and Ascari the hunted. With 20 laps to go, Olly was only two seconds behind the Wilds Ferrari and 16 away from the leading Mosler. Bryant was the fastest man on the track and set a scorching pace as he got right on the bumper of the Ferrari and virtually pushed it towards the leaders ahead. With 10 to go these two were on the tail of the Mosler, which was now suffering overheating problems and had slipped behind the Ascari. Just a lap later, however, Wilds spun out the Ferrari coming onto the back straight and Olly lost a few seconds as he avoided the wayward Italian stallion.

With six tours left the Barwell Ginetta swept past the Mosler into second, but the Jones Ascari was still another four seconds up the road. Olly put his heart and soul into the chase as he recorded more pace-setting lap times, and was just half a second away from the Ascari as they started the last lap. Jones kept his nerve, however, and didn’t leave Olly an opening around the final 2 miles of racing. The Barwell car thus crossed the finish line glued to the back of the Ascari, to claim a very well-earned runner-up spot.

The Howard/Smyth Aston had a colourful journey on its way to claim sixth position in GT3, but the fact that it was running at all was a testament to Barwell Motorsport’s resources and fantastic technicians. The DBRS9 was dong some promotional work for a film crew in the pit lane on Friday evening, and unfortunately the out-of-the-ordinary demands of this continual ‘stop-start’ work led to the clutch overheating and exploding in spectacular fashion during a filmed run. During this extraordinary incident, the disintegrating clutch assembly smashed its way through the thick cast alloy bell-housing and destroyed the torque tube, propshaft, left-hand exhaust manifold and pipes, clutch hydraulics, starter motor, lambda sensor and various other ancillaries and components in the engine bay. Despite the extensive and unusual damage, we carried 90% of the parts in our spares stock, and what we didn’t have on-site we arranged to be brought up from the Barwell workshop on Friday night. Our skilled crew of mechanics then set about the major rebuild job and carried out on-the-spot fabrications and repairs until the DBRS9 was back in one piece as dawn broke on Saturday morning!

The car ran fine all the way through Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions, and Andrew then gave it a work out during the first half of the race as he battled hard against the weaving Ferrari of Hector Lester. Despite being barged into by the Ferrari during the course of this battle, Howard survived the resulting spin and gathered things up to hand over to Jamie in seventh place (sixth in GT3 point-scoring positions). Jamie then enjoyed a mighty fight with the Ford GT of Michael Bentwood, frustrating the ex-F3 driver’s attempts to pass him for lap after lap. Bentwood eventually muscled his way past on lap 32, however, and soon after Jamie reported an increasingly ‘long’ brake pedal. As he was safe in sixth place in GT3, Jamie then just nursed the car to get a finish. The problem was later traced to a knock-on affect of the previous evening’s damage to the master cylinders, which had taken some time to reveal itself.

Race 2

The pace was incredibly hot at the start of Sunday’s encounter, with the ‘pro’ drivers all fighting bare-knuckle style for track position around the high speed sweeps of Snetterton. The Simonsen Ferrari got away cleanly from pole, but Bentwood’s Ford GT was slow away and blocked Olly going into the first corner. This allowed Wilds’ Ferrari to sneak through and grab third place from the Barwell Ginetta, and a few laps later the ex-F1 driver also grabbed second from Bentwood in a robust manoeuvre at the Esses. With the Ford GT getting knocked out of the way Olly was promoted back to third but still had the scarlet Ferrari to deal with.

All this meant that Simonsen was completely unmolested up front, and making a hasty getaway. Prior to the race we knew that it would be imperative for Olly to keep Simonsen firmly in his sights, so that the gap would not be too large for Piers to close down later in the race when the tardy Lester was back at the wheel of the lead Ferrari. Unfortunately our game plan was being scuppered by another red Prancing Horse, as Wilds resolutely kept Olly at bay. Although Wilds had reasonable pace, he was clearly holding the Barwell Ginetta up and as every lap passed Simonsen’s lead grew and grew…along with the frustration of the Barwell pit crew. Olly was channelling his frustration into trying to pass Wilds, but the new Ferrari is both very quick in a straight line and very good under braking which made it extremely hard for Bryant to carve out a gap that he could fit a Ginetta into. With Wilds defence delaying both cars, Mr Bentwood was now looming large in Olly’s mirrors after recovering from his earlier nerf from our mutual nemesis Wilds.

By lap 21 the three cars were running nose-to-tail, and Olly knew that he had to pull out all the stops to put Wilds behind him. Going into the Sear corner leading onto the back straight on lap 26, Bryant finally got inside the Ferrari under braking and had the line into the corner. Wilds still made life difficult and turned into the side of the G50Z but it was too late to prevent Olly from taking the place. Unfortunately the hit on Olly’s car caused him to lose momentum, and on the exit of the corner Bentwood was able to out drag both cars and demote Olly straight back down to third again!

Meanwhile Jamie was embroiled in a stonking battle of his own, as part of a train of four cars that were all fighting over fourth place. This was initially headed by the fast starting Viper of Scott, who then had the Wilcox Ferrari, Jamie and the Bentwood Ford queuing up behind him. This high-speed ‘train’ whirled round for 15 laps before the Viper’s tyres started to struggle and he got shuffled down the pack by the Ford and the Ferrari. Unfortunately Jamie then got stuck behind the big American machine for the next 10 laps and lost 10 seconds on the Wilcox Ferrari that he had previously been shadowing. Smyth clearly still had very good pace at this stage of the race, but the power of the Viper made it a very tricky proposition for him to pass.

Frustratingly Olly still wasn’t able to enjoy clean air for the last few laps of his stint, and by the time he pitted to hand over to Piers the gap to the lead Ferrari had grown out to over 25 seconds.  Piers thus emerged from the pits just behind the Ford GT again, but its new driver Philip Walker was unable to offer much resistance and the Barwell Ginetta was up to second after just a single lap. Getting around the Ford had cost him a few seconds, however, and thus with 19 laps remaining he had to find 27 seconds to get onto the tail of the Ferrari ahead (now with Lester at the wheel). The maths worked out that Piers needed to be an average of 1.42 seconds per lap quicker than his rival to be with him on the last lap. Johnson got stuck into the task well, belying the fact that this is his first race meeting of the year, and settled into a pace that was bang on target.

Also playing this cat and mouse game was the Jones Ascari, which now had the faster twin aboard and was carving its way back up the order. This car was thus set to catch both Piers and Lester on the last lap, and a thrilling last 15 minutes of racing played out in front of the large Snetterton crowd. With 10 laps to go, Piers had kept up the attack in great style with an incredibly consistent run, and with the gap at 15 seconds he was still on course to make it a ‘grandstand’ finish! The next five laps, however, provided major set-backs to our cause, as Piers got held up by some backmarkers and simultaneously Lester managed to up his pace by a few 10ths of a second per lap. With three laps to go the margin was 5.6 seconds, and it would now need a mistake from the Ferrari driver to upset the order. The bigger threat to the Ginetta’s result was now from the Ascari, which was on Piers’ bumper on the penultimate lap. Jones wasn’t able to put a move on the Barwell driver, however, and Piers took the flag in second place.

Jamie handed the Aston over to Andrew in seventh spot (6th in GT3) with 19 laps to go, after what had been a very strong stint from the ex Formula Ford ace. After all the pit stops had shuffled out, the early stopping Mosler had sneaked ahead of the Barwell-Beechdean Aston. We were still in 7th spot, however, as during the course of things the Mosler had nudged the Viper into a spin and thus removed him out of our way as well! Andrew thus set about hunting down the Burton/Wilcox Ferrari, and after a consistent run had cut the gap down from 10 seconds to four in just 10 laps. With eight laps to go he was all over the back of the Italian car and enjoyed a good scrap with Burton for three laps. With the Ferrari hard to pass in the braking areas, Howard got creative and used his superior speed through the fast Bombhole corner to get a run on Burton into the following 120mph Coram bend. Andrew then stuck his Aston down the inside of the Ferrari as they turned into Coram, and claimed sixth place with a ballsy move. He was then rapidly closing in on the Cameron/Wilds Ferrari, but ran out of time. It was a good stint from the Beechdean Ice Cream man, however, who had taken 14 seconds out of leader Lester despite having to battle with and overtake other cars.

Then shortly after the race had finished, news came through that Lester had been excluded from the results for contravening a technical regulation, thus promoting Olly and Piers to first place in the amended results. This also moved Andrew and Jamie up to fifth overall and fourth in GT3.