Podium finishes for opening rounds of British GT Championship

Luke Hines put the Team LNT Panoz Esperante GTLM at the front of the field for the start of round one of the 2006 British GT Championship this weekend, 15th April 2006.

Hines, in his debut Sportscar race, qualified ahead of the Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari of Chris Niarchos and Tim Mullen by 1.283 seconds at Oulton Park in Cheshire. The lead was maintained at the start of the race after the rolling start and managed to hold off the challengers, building up a 1.9 second lead by the end of lap 3. Hines was able to draw upon his British Touring Car experience to keep Niarchos at bay - who gradually closed the gap - right up to the mandatory pit stop.

With approximately 35 minutes of the 1 hour race remaining, Hines and Nicharos both came into the pits nose-to-tail for the minimum 45 second driver changeover pit stop.

Upon Kimber-Smith’s exit of the pit lane, time was gained on the Ferrari – with Mullen now at the wheel. However, as the Panoz and the Ferrari came out of Deer Leap for the 21st time, Mullen put his car alongside Kimber-Smith who was forced to defend the racing line. Kimber-Smith managed to hold on as the pair exited Old Hall but as the cars hurtled down to Shell Oils Corner Mullen seized his chance and came back towards Hill Top in the lead, ahead of Team LNT’s second British GT debut driver.

Throughout the course of the race – and with traffic helping its cause – the Ferrari pulled out a healthy lead. With round two in mind and the Panoz well ahead of its nearest rival who was more than 50 seconds behind, Kimber-Smith’s pace eased to save the tyres (only two sets are allowed per weekend) and minimise risk of running off the road – settling for 2nd position.

Race two took place on Easter Monday, and the weather was looking increasingly threatening for the race. Fortunately rain held off and Kimber-Smith had a dry start from second place, and was right with the Ferrai pole-sitter into Old Hall after the rolling start but couldn’t quite get ahead into the lead at the exit.

As the pair pulled away from the rest of the field, Kimber-Smith was able to keep the Ferrari in his sights and in doing so beat his own qualifying time by completing a lap time of 1.42.039 on lap 3.

Traffic added to the excitement around lap 11 and extended Mullen’s lead in the Ferrari by 5.7 seconds but with the compulsory pit-stop imminent at any time, Team LNT’s 21-year old driver still kept up the pressure.

At the time for the pit-stop, the Scuderia Ecosse team had their car 10 seconds ahead of the Team LNT Panoz, but a good driver changeover for the new drivers closed the gap to just 2.793 seconds.

Hines now had to just stay with Niarchos and apply the pressure. This he succeeded in matching his rivals pace but whilst battling through traffic, couldn’t close the gap enough to take the win.

“Tom (Kimber-Smith) did a good job in the first stint and a quick pitstop gained us a few seconds, but there is a lot of traffic out there, it was hard,” said Hines.

“The Ferrari has got the edge around this circuit and Oulton Park is strong for Ferrari, but I think we've got tracks where we're going to be strong and the result will be the other way round. We bagged the points, we had no retirements, the team did very good.”

So, the first time out for Team LNT in their Panoz for the British GT Championship and two new drivers to the series; twelve points in the championship table. The season is sure to be an exciting one…

"We came to this weekend hoping to be on the podium for both races and to have two seconds is great for me and Luke,” said Kimber-Smith. “The team has done a good job.  This is the car we raced at Sebring and it came back two weeks ago.  It's been stripped and rebuilt, we didn't do any testing in it, we had to test the LMS cars, we haven't had much running on the Avon's so I think where we are showing how strong we could be, we just need a little bit more running and hopefully at Donington we can show full potential."

Rounds three and four will be on the weekend of May 20th and 21st at Donington Park.

If you would like to see the action from rounds 1 and 2, there are opportunities to see highlights on Motors TV (available on Sky digital) and Channel 4:

Motors TV:
29/04/06 17.00
30/04/06 04.00
30/04/06 21.00
02-03/05/06 midnight
03/05/06 06.00
04/05/06 13.00
05/05/06 17.00
07/05/06 14.00

Channel 4:
06/05/06 07.30