Jake Rattenbury steps onto the podium at
Spa in the British GT Championship
Teenage Wrda
member Jake Rattenbury with his co-driver Josh Wakefield overcame practice woes to score
an excellent 2nd in class in the first of two races in the British GT
championship at the famous Spa Francorchamps circuit in the Ardennes region of Belgium. Rattenbury &Wakefield were competing in the GT4
class in a Ginetta G50, run by Century Motorsport. The weekend started badly as
after only 3 laps of practice, the differential mounting broke which put the car out of
the remainder of qualifying. This meant that the car would qualify on the 19th
row in the first race and 22nd row for the second race, with some of their main
rivals several rows ahead of them. (As this was a joint meeting between British GT, Dutch
GT4 and others, the grid was over 50 cars)
Race 1
took place on Saturday morning with Rattenbury taking the first stint and it was apparent
almost immediately that the car was being held up by other cars, so Rattenbury forced his
way up the pack to put the car into a challenging position. Then just after the pitstop
window opened, the Safety Car was deployed to sort out an incident, so Jake and most of
the field pitted to change drivers. The changeover went smoothly and the car, with Wakefield
at the wheel, set about catching the Lotus Evora in 2nd place. After an
incident at La Source hairpin Wakefield slipped through to take 2nd place and
then started to try and catch the leading car, but in was too far ahead, and so
Wakefield/Rattenbury took the flag in an excellent 2nd place in class and a
visit to the famous Spa Francorchamps podium.
Race 2
took place a few hours later in early afternoon with Wakefield driving in the 1st
stint and Rattenbury taking over and driving the car to the finish. Due to their 2nd
place in the earlier race the car had to wait for a further 10 seconds in the pits during
the driver changeover, so Rattenbury had to try and drive as quickly as he could to catch
and then pass one of the Lotus Evoras to take 4th place at the chequered
flag.
As
Rattenbury commented at the end Weekend
started off great in testing, but we were a bit off the pace with brake problems, but in
qualifying I went a second quicker on my first flying lap which was great but on my second
lap the differential mount broke which put us out of qualifying which was a great shame!!
But the race was amazing, I think I overtook around 15 cars on the first lap! It was hard,
but having 50 something cars squeezing through the first corner was very entertaining! But
great work through the race got us up to 2nd and for my first race at Spa I'm over the
moon! It was a great race! The 2nd race was really hard but after chipping away we got up
to 4th so a great weekend altogether! Great thanks to the team.!
The
championship now moves onto the Rockingham Motor Speedway circuit near Corby for the next
races on 4th September.
By Chris
Roberts/WiderviewPhoto
Information
about the Avon Tyres British GT Championship
The Avon
Tyres British GT Championship (previously known as the BRDC GT Championship) is a sports
car racing series currently based in the United Kingdom, although they have had select
races outside of Britain in the past few years. The series was created by the British Racing Drivers'
Club in 1993 and for its first two seasons was called the National Sports GT
Challenge. The series is currently run by the Stéphane Ratel
Organisation in conjunction with the British Formula
Three Championship, and sponsored by Avon
Tyres.
As part of
the evolution of the series, the GT3 class of cars were introduced in 2005. This class
later became identical to the FIA GT3 European
Championship class, using nearly identical rules from 2006 onward. Due to the
cost-saving measures in the class, the faster GT2 class was phased out at the end of 2006.
The new FIA GT4 class will
be adapted in 2008, replacing the unique GTC class that had previously been used. For
2011, the GT4 category amalgamates GT4-homologated cars and Supersport-type machines.
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