Jody Fannin did a fantastic job to bring the PFL Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3 home in 8th position, after an incident plagued opening round of British GT last weekend at Brands Hatch. The Surrey youngster made his debut with the newly establish team after minimal winter testing and succeeded in helping secure a points scoring finish for himself and his driving partner Peter Littler.

The Friday and Saturday practice sessions were used mainly to help Peter get up to speed with the complex twists and turns of the daunting Brands Hatch Grand Prix configuration. This was made even more challenging by the ever changing weather conditions, but Peter did a great job to reduce his lap times throughout the day.

A small delay whilst changing drivers during qualifying meant that Jody headed out on circuit two laps behind the rest of the GT3 PROs. This resulted in a slow out lap while he kept out of the way of those drivers already on their flying laps, meaning the tyres were below optimum temperature as he started his first flying lap. Adding the presence of a yellow flag into the mix at Druids for the remainder of the session, the BRDC Rising Star did a stellar job to place him 7th in the PRO session. Combining the PRO and AM times put the PFL machine 13th on the starting grid alongside the 2015 Driver Championship winning Beechdean Aston.

Littler took to his first GT race start on the Sunday amongst a 30 strong grid and moved up two positions within his challenging hour long stint. A serious incident between three cars at Pilgrims Drop brought the race into Code 80, a full course yellow procedure which reduced the remaining racers to a maximum of 80kmh. The pit stop window opened during the Code 80 period and the Cheshire based driver handed the Aston Martin over to Fannin in 11th position. “Due to his disability, Peter has difficulty exiting the car, so my job is to basically yank him out of the car as quickly as possible and remove a plate which helps with the positioning of his prosthetic leg. In spite of this, the team did a fantastic job to turn the car around without losing too much time.” explained Fannin. As a result of the considerable work needed to clear up the stranded cars and the barriers being in need of repair, the Code 80 was present during the first 7 laps of Jody’s stint.

At the restart he was stuck behind the Optimum Audi for several laps experiencing a great deal of understeer, which had not been present at any other time throughout the weekend. “I thought the fact that I was very close to the Audi meant that the aero was being taken off the front of the car, but after I got past, it made no difference” reported Fannin.  He got his head down and climbed up the order, taking seconds a lap out of the car ahead and within the final laps of the race,  took 8th position from Martin Short in the Team Abba BMW Z4 just before a red flag brough a halt to proceedings 20 minutes early, due to a fire in the Tolman Ginetta GT3.

With the first round of the British GT under their belt, the PFL squad now have their sights set on more point scoring finishes. There is more to come from the new team and there is a lot to learn, but Fannin strongly believes that Littler has it in him to become an extremely competitive AM driver given more time in the car.

Jody’s next outing will be at Rockingham in two weeks time for the second round of the British GT Championship.