Charles Dawson and Kiern Jewiss drove to victory in the British GT Championship’s two-hour feature race at Brands Hatch this afternoon (Sunday). The duo negotiated a series of safety cars with Jewiss resisting late pressure to cross the line first in their shared 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG.
Kevin Tse started from pole in the sister 2 Seas Motorsport entry, but Giacomo Petrobelli produced a better start from second to take the lead in Blackthorn’s Aston Martin Vantage. Rob Collard also jumped the pole-sitter to run second early on in one of Barwell Motorsport’s Lamborghinis.
There was an early halt to full speed action however, when the GT4 McLaren of Marc Warren and Jack Brown ran off the circuit at Druids, calling for the safety car. Racing resumed on lap seven with Petrobelli still in the lead, but he had to give this up after a drive-through penalty was imposed for a technical infringement on the starting grid.
This left Collard in the lead and left the Aston Martin with work to do before the pack was once again closed following another safety car period. This came about after the Ginetta shared by Jack Mitchell and Josh Miller stopped amidst a cloud of smoke on the Grand Prix loop.
Once racing resumed Collard led once again before the order was shuffled around during the pit stop window with both Collard and Tse at the head of the order due to serve success penalties. This allowed Dawson to hand over to Jewiss in the effective lead of the race and the car duly rose to the front once Tse came in as the last of the front runners.
Following the stops, Jewiss was never far ahead of the Optimum Motorsport McLaren of Marvin Kirchhöfer, who’d just taken over from Morgan Tillbrook. But despite managing to keep the gap down, the McLaren wasn’t presented with any clear openings.
The field was bunched up once again on lap 54 when Sven Muller’s Porsche which he co-drives with Nick Jones collided with Matin Plowman in the McLaren he’s sharing with Mark Smith. After initially touching at Surtees, Muller went off at Hawthorn, causing the safety car to reappear. At the same time, Patrick Kujala suffered a puncture in the second Barwell Lamborghini.
Action got back underway with just under 10 minutes still to run with Jewiss just doing enough to keep Kirchhöfer behind. The lead car eventually took the chequered flag after 68 laps, beating the McLaren into second by just under half a second. Collard’s co-pilot Hugo Cook completed the podium after looming just behind the top-two in the latter stages.
Behind that, it was Jonny Adam in fourth after a strong recovery for the Blackthorn car driven earlier on by Petrobelli. The Aston Martin kept its nose clean following the drive-through and rose back up the order to claim a strong result, just ahead of Beechdean’s similar machine driven by Andrew Howard and Tom Wood.
Simon Orange and Marcus Clutton were sixth in their McLaren ahead of Maximilian Götz in the car he and Tse were paired up in. Tse remained out longest of all in the first stint, but it didn’t do much to offset their success penalty, forcing the duo to settle for seventh.
Jon Kearney and Callum Macleod were eighth, ahead of Plowman who recovered from the incident with Muller to come home ninth. Kujala also came back from his late drama to secure 10th for himself in his and Alex Martin’s Lamborghini.
GT4 victory went to Harry George and Seb Hopkinson in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren Artura GT4.
British GT Championship, Race Result, Brands Hatch
- Dawson/Jewiss, 2 Seas Motorsport, Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo
- Tillbrook/Kirchhöfer, Optimum Motorsport, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +0.499s
- Collard/Cook, Barwell Motorsport, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, +1.328s
- Petrobelli/Adam, Blackthorn, Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, +10.178s
- Howard/Wood, Beechdean Motorsport, Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, +10.393s
- Orange/Clutton, Orange Racing by JMH, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +10.779s
- Tse/Götz, 2 Seas Motorsport, Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, +11.201s
- Kearney/Macleod, Optimum Motorsport, Mclaren 720S GT3 Evo, +11.636s
- Smith/Plowman, Paddock Motorsport, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, +11.946s
- Martin/Kujala, Barwell Motorsport, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, +1 lap
Click here for the full times from this race event.