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 2^nd 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 19^th row in the first race and 22^nd 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 2^nd place. After an incident at La Source hairpin Wakefield slipped through to take 2^nd 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 2^nd 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 1^st stint and Rattenbury taking over and driving the car to the finish. Due to their 2^nd 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 Evora’s to take 4^th 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 4^th 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.