In what proved to be a challenging round four of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship, Trackspeed Racing now look to put the Silverstone 500 behind them, and reestablish their status as front-runners, as the series moves onto Snetterton.

A brace of incidents during the early stages of the three-hour race at Silverstone effectively brought Trackspeed Racing’s Championship charge to an abrupt halt, like a Greek tragedy.

The three Porsches of David Ashburn & Nick Tandy, Gregor Fisken & Richard Westbrook, and Phil Keen & Jon Minshaw, had started the weekend strongly, with the 997 GT3Rs taking positions second, third and fourth respectively in qualifying. As the 47 car grid took the rolling start, Ashburn sneaked into the lead, whilst behind him, Fisken and Minshaw swapped places to occupy third and fourth. Ashburn’s lead wasn’t to last though, as the power of the BMW Z4 of Marco Attard took the front running spot back on the same lap approaching Stowe corner.

As the minutes ticked away the professional drivers that had started the race were starting to make their way up the order, whilst the Trackspeed cars shuffled places. With ten minutes on the board, Minshaw was third, Fisken sixth and Ashburn seventh, with the three of them representing the top placed amateurs on the track.

At this point, the first safety car of the race was introduced, and Minshaw took the opportunity to head to pit lane in the No.33 997 GT3R to hand over to Keen. Once proceedings got underway again, Keen started to charge through the field, progressing from fourteenth on the restart to tenth within the space of a few minutes. Then the incident of the race that would ultimately seal the fate of all three Trackspeed cars came to be.

Glued to the bumper of Rob Barff’s Ferrari, Keen was blind to the fact that Fisken had collected a puncture and was limping his way back to the pits. A late swerve by Barff meant Keen would only see the Tartan liveried Porsche at the last moment, and had little time to react to the slowing sister car of Fisken. Despite his best efforts to take avoiding action, Keen and Fisken’s cars collided side by side, sending them both off the circuit, and to eventual retirement. This brought out the safety car for it’s second excursion, which made perfect timing for Ashburn to head to pit-lane and put Tandy in the polka-dot Porsche. However, as he approached the entrance to the pits, Ashburn became distracted whilst searching for the speed-limiter switch, and made contact with the barrier, causing enough damage to retire the No.31 car.

“It’s my mistake.” He earnestly told MotorsTV once he’d climbed from the car. “I’m fine but the cars not.”

With all three Trackspeed Porsches out of the race, their position at the top of the team and driver standings came under assault, but with such a strong start to the season with each car already taking a victory, their title hopes are still firmly on track. Ashburn and Tandy now occupy third in the drivers Championship, with Fiken and Westbrook fifth, just a handful of points behind. On the cusp of the top-ten is Minshaw and Keen, who hold 25 points to their names and still remain in the fight with the leader-board so tightly packed.

The next round of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship heads to Snetterton on the weekend of June 15th, where Trackspeed’s front running Porsches will be aiming to build on their three races wins for 2013, and head back to the top of the standings.

Source : Trackspeed Racing