British GT Championship - Round 6
Snetterton

Saturday Warm-up
Qualifying
Round 6 race
Sunday Warm up
Round 7 race

The British GT Team LNT crew have been at Snetterton circuit near Norwich since Wednesday afternoon in preparation for a weekend of racing to defend their championship lead. There has been more testing with four sessions on Thursday and Friday.

Continuing from the test session 1 week ago, Avon Tyres - the championship’s sole tyre supplier - have been working with the drivers and engineers in further development of the Team’s rubber.

Championship leaders Tom Kimber-Smith and Luke Hines also did experimental running on various car settings to find the best pace from the Panoz around the high-speed circuit.

Saturday Warm-up

Saturday morning’s warm up is the first timed session for the GT racers and the first real opportunity to assess pace compared to fellow competitors. Kimber-Smith takes to the driving seat first for the 75 minute session and immediately tops the timesheet by almost 1 second.

5 flying laps later, Hines changes places with Kimber-Smith to assess for himself any change in track grip or car changes - this is the final opportunity before qualifying!

Scuderia doesn’t make an appearance on track until the final thirty minutes of the session. By this time, the LNT Panoz is back in the pit lane about to return to the garage to have its gearbox checked. There’s a suspected problem with 2nd gear.

Scuderia’s Ferrari 430 took the top spot with a time of 1.08.193; 1.397 seconds ahead of Team LNT. The Eclipse Mosler is looking strong too - about half a second behind and in third place.

It’s going to be two closely matched rounds of the British GT Championship with some real racing between the top three GT racers.

Qualifying

Kimber-Smith went out first of all to determine his grid place for race 1 that will be run at 4.30pm. Team LNT’s ‘Brimmers’ has rebuilt the insides of the gearbox to rectify a general wear and tear problem that surfaced.

21-year old Kimber-Smith immediately went fastest and remained so throughout the 15 minute session to take pole with a time of 1.09.428. Niarchos was first to qualify his team’s Ferrari but could only manage 3rd place - 0.206 seconds adrift.

Phil Keen in his Mosler popped in a surprise time of 1.09.437 to go 2nd on the grid - the Team’s best this season.

“I’m quite surprised at that” said Kimber-Smith in a conversation about the Mosler. “I know we’ve got pole, but I’m quite disappointed with our pace. We should be much quicker around here than we are and I thought the Ferrari would be quicker as well.”

Indeed it was in the 2nd qualification session completing a lap in 1.08.057 in the first 3 laps. With a 2 second advantage over 2nd quickest Hines, Tim Mullen parked his car in the pits where it would remain.

Hines tried to close the gap but running consistently in the low 1.10’s he too came into the pits with 5 minutes of the session remaining, and a 2.7 second gap ahead of Eclipse’s third place Lee Caroline.

The chequered flag dropped to signal the end of the session - but cars can complete the lap they’re currently on. It just so happens that Caroline is on a fast lap and just nips in between the Ferrari and the Panoz on the grid demoting Hines to third for Sunday afternoon’s race.

So, Kimber-Smith, Niarchos and Keen line up 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively for round 6; then Mullen, Caroline and Hines head the grid in round 7.

Round 6

Scuderia Ecosse have to start from the pit lane, effectively putting them to the back of the grid. There is a specific time window where a car has to be present on the grid. The car arrived just after this window closed and so hence its new starting position.

Kimber-Smith makes a great start, but the #77 Mosler catapults into 2nd position right behind him. Pushing hard to open up a gap and gain maximum advantage when the pit stops arise, Kimber-Smith pulls ahead by 7.451 seconds after 6 laps.

Chris Niarchos is on a charge - working his way through the field. Of course, the field is made up by GTC and GT3 cars that are naturally slower, but still not an ‘easy’ job by any means..

The #69 Mosler that started 2nd has a brief visit to the pit lane and rejoins just behind the #57 Team LNT Panoz effectively 1 lap behind, but keeping up with the young 21-year old Panoz driver and applying pressure.

Kimber-Smith allows the Mosler past to avoid any racing incident that may occur and release the pressure by the faster-looking Eclipse car.

10 minutes into the race and Niarchos is already into third place and 15 seconds behind Kimber-Smith. The Ferrari working well on a new tyre compound supplied to them by Avon tyres.

As the pit stop window opens, Niarchos pits the Ferrari from 2nd position for Tim Mullen to take over the drive. Kimber-Smith remains out on track for a few more laps and the Scuderia Ecosse car rejoins right behind the distinctive Orange Panoz - albeit a lap behind.

Continuing on Niarchos’s charge, Mullen goes ahead of Kimber-Smith as the Team LNT crew prepare for their driver change over. With 26 minutes remaining, Luke Hines takes over to complete the race. The ex-BTCC driver rejoins the circuit 2 seconds ahead of Mullen and does his best to fight off the Irishman but has to relent a lap later to give Ferrari the lead.

Traffic plays its part in allowing Mullen to open up a gap of 10 seconds as both he and Hines pick their way through the GTC and GT3 cars enjoying a race of their own.

Third place, the #77 Rollcentre Racing’s Mosler has an unfortunate problem 12 minutes from the end and has an unscheduled pit stop that deems its terminal fate. Phil Keen (completing the race solo due to his team-mate suddenly being unable to race due to a bug) is handed third place - one minute down the circuit.

Scuderia take the win ahead of Hines and Keen in a race where the ongoing tyre issue seems to have played its part.

Chris Niarchos explained to DailySportscar how things have changed since Ireland: “Stewart Roden had given Avon an ultimatum last week, and pushed them to produce what was in effect a tyre based on 15-year old technology. Avon said they would shred after five laps, but 88 laps later, they are still holding up, and are quicker. The previous tyres gave no predictability, no indications. Ecosse are the only team with these tyres.”

Sunday warm up

9am on the Sunday morning. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the forecast predicts more of the same for the rest of the day.

Tom Kimber-Smith takes the Team LNT Panoz out for the morning ten-minute run and Chris Niarchos out in the Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari. The cool, morning track temperature suited the Panoz much better than in the hot conditions of yesterday.

Kimber-Smith topped the timesheets running 1.10’s; Niarchos running about a second off the pace in 2nd place. As the Ferrari and the Panoz pit for a check-around, Phil Keen in his Eclipse Mosler put in a hot lap to go 2nd fastest.

Returning to the track, Kimber-Smith registered a 1.09.860 - the Panoz’s tyres working well on the cooler, morning track temperature. Keen remains in 2nd position 1.245 seconds behind Kimber-Smith and Niarchos in third place 0.307 seconds slower than Keen.

Round 7

Tim Mullen began race two of the weekend from pole position for a flag to flag race for the Scottish Scuderia Ecosse Team. Team LNT’s Luke Hines started from third behind the Eclipse Mosler of Phil Keen.

The positions remained as such for the two laps. Mullen began pulling away as suspected - the track’s asphalt now much higher in temperature than in the morning warm up session. Hines meanwhile was right up behind Keen applying pressure, anxious to get past.

This he did on his third lap but now Keen was applying the pressure on Hines.

30 minutes of exciting racing and superb driving from the two competitors ensued - Hines doing a great job of defending his second position as Keen stayed right with Team LNT’s ex-British Touring Car driver. The Mosler looked quicker through corners with Hines struggling with his tyres with the high track temperatures, but the Panoz appeared faster in a straight line.

Meanwhile, Mullen was gradually opening up a comfortable lead over his battling rivals.

As the pit window opened on lap 20, the #1 Ferrari was 32 seconds ahead of #57 Hines with #69 Keen only 0.3 seconds behind as they crossed the start / finish line.

5 laps later, and Keen comes in for his compulsary pit stop. Eclipse won’t be changing their driver today as Lee Caroline has left the circuit with a bug. Therefore an extra 15 seconds penalty will be added to the Mosler’s stop.

Hines remains out on track for two further laps before coming into the pits to hand the driving duties over to Tom Kimber-Smith.

Emerging from the pit lane 8 seconds ahead of the Eclipse Mosler, Kimber-Smith works the car hard to maintain the gap and with a busy 27-car field, working through traffic makes the job harder.

Niarchos takes over in the Ferrari with 25 minutes of the race remaining with a comfortable 42 second advantage on Mullen’s in lap.

Keen pushes to close the gap between himself and Kimber-Smith, but to no avail. The young Panoz driver pushing all the way in the soaring heat to the end.

Niarchos steadies his pace down with the gap between himself and Kimber-Smith reduced to 23 seconds at the chequered flag. Keen following 6 seconds later.

On completion of one of the hardest race with the heat affecting the drivers and the tyres, Kimber-Smith put the race into perspective: “This 2nd place means more to the team than the wins at Mondello.” He told us. “Knowing by Saturday morning we couldn’t win and might struggle to get 2nd with the Mosler upping its pace, the Team gelled and worked really well together and it shows how well we work as a team.”

Luke Hines was equally pleased with the weekend’s results. “The last race - I loved it” said Hines. “I loved the fighting and close racing. Touring cars eat your heart out! 500 bhp sports cars slipping right left and centre for 30 minutes, battling it out inside and out - it was mad.

“It was hard for us but it was racing all the way. It is a shame because if we had all been given the same tyre compound, we may have had 3 drivers battling it out until the last lap. That would have been great for GT racing.”

Team LNT still lead the championship points table by three points with four weekends remaining. The British GT squad visit Rockingham on August 13th next.