Alexander Sims prepared for today’s all-important Avon Tyres British GT Championship #DoningtonDecider qualifying session by topping the times in a red flag and rain-interrupted second practice session. Dennis Strandberg, meanwhile, was fastest of the GT4 runners.
While Sims’ best of 1m29.618s was some eight seconds faster than the wet first session, the rest of the GT3 runners had only a brief window with which to respond to the championship leader after a heavy rain shower with more than 30 minutes remaining cut short the dry running just as the track was beginning to rubber in.
Fellow title rival Joe Osborne ended up 0.285s adrift of Sims in second aboard Triple Eight Racing’s BMW Z4, with Jon Barnes and 22GT’s Aston Martin third.
Matt Bell had looked like bettering the Ecurie Ecosse driver’s benchmark after setting faster first and second sectors only to be baulked by traffic. In the end he and TF Sport co-driver Derek Johnston finished fourth, just over a second shy of the ultimate pace.
Euan Hankey and Salih Yoluc again demonstrated good pace aboard their Von Ryan Racing McLaren 650S to finish fifth, while Ahmad Al Harthy and Alex MacDowall finished one place ahead of their Oman Racing team-mates and title challengers Liam Griffin and Rory Butcher.
Andrew Howard’s decision to bolt on slicks at the end of FP1 helped him finish the morning session over three seconds clear of his rivals, but there would be no repeat this time around as he and Beechdean AMR co-driver Jonny Adam finished only 10th.
It was a similar story in GT4 where Dennis Strandberg and Academy Motorsport lead the way thanks to an early lap of 1m38.144s. The Swede was less than 0.154s quicker than the Tolman Motorsport Ginetta of Luke Davenport and Jake Giddings’ JWB Aston Martin.
FP1’s pace-setters ISSY Racing were fourth fastest courtesy of Gavan Kershaw and Oz Yusuf despite the latter being caught out by a river of water running across the track at McLeans after the heavens opened. They finished just ahead of the similar Lotus Evora driven by UltraTek pairing Tim Eakin and Jamie Wall.
Jamie Stanley recovered from the same misfortune as Yusuf, which necessitated a short red flag period, to finish sixth but only half-a-second shy of the class benchmark. Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn, who were crowned GT4 champions at Snetterton last time out, rounded out the top-six.
The second UltraTek Lotus in the hands of Richard Taffinder caused the other stoppage after spinning into the McLeans gravel, and there was also an off for Steve Tandy who lost control of his Team LNT Ginetta GT3 on cold tyres through the Craner Curves.
Today’s all-important qualifying session to decide the grid for Sunday’s #DoningtonDecider gets underway at 15:30 today.