The father-son pairing of Richard and Sam Neary topped the opening British GT Championship session of the weekend with a Free Practice time of 1m23.832s on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit this morning (Saturday).
Sam Neary’s final effort of the 60-minute on-track period was enough to top the running on a bright morning at the Kent circuit. This was enough to edge the Mercedes-AMG to the top of the order, just over a tenth of a second clear of the title contending Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini of Sandy Mitchell.
Like the Neary machine, Mitchell set his best time of the session on his last tour of Brands Hatch’s famed longer layout. The Lamborghini, shared by Mitchell with Alex Martin was itself marginally quicker than the first of a crop of McLarens, with the Garage 59 entry of Morgan Tillbrook and Marcus Clutton leading the contingent.
Simon Orange and Benjamin Goethe’s 720s GT3 Evo was next of the McLarens ahead of Mark Radcliffe and Tom Gamble’s Optimum Motorsport entry and the second Garage 59 machine of Adam Smalley and Shaun Balfe.
The second of Barwell’s Lamborghinis, the standings leading example of Rob and Ricky Collard, was seventh ahead of Kevin Tse and Maximilian Goetz’s Mercedes-AMG. The GT3 field’s sole BMW, the Century Motorsport car of Carl Cavers and Lewis Plato, ran ninth with Joshua Caygill and Alex Buncombe rounding out the top-ten in another McLaren.
British GT Championship, Free Practice, Brands Hatch
- Neary/Neary, Team Abba Racing, Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, 1m23.832s
- Martin/Mitchell, Barwell Motorsport, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, +0.120s
- Tillbrook/Clutton, Garage 59, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.208s
- Orange/Goethe, Orange Racing by JMH, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.259s
- Radcliffe/Gamble, Optimum Motorsport, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.273s
- Smalley/Balfe, Garage 59, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.403s
- Collard/Collard, Barwell Motorsport, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, +0.636s
- Tse/Goetz, 2 Seas Motorsport, Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, +0.676s
- Cavers/Plato, Century Motorsport, BMW M4 GT3, +0.850s
- Buncombe/Caygill, Team RJN, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.915s
Click here for full timings and results from this event.