Donington Park Sunday 24th September 2017

After a 6 week hiatus..(it's been one of those years!!)..it was to Donington Park for the final rounds of the British GT Championship and it's support package. A package that saw 13 races scheduled for a very full day's racing on the 2.5 mile Grand Prix circuit layout at Donington organised by the BRSCC. Indeed the Midlands centre of the BRSCC were amazingly organising 3 separate meetings on this day...Donington plus Mallory Park and a Ferrari meeting at Silverstone! Simply crazy and a sad reflection on how race meetings are organised in these modern times...The Circuits offer take it or leave it dates to clubs so if they leave it, it's simply a case of no meeting. The clash between Mallory and Donington was extremely unfortunate, especially as Mallory only has 4 car meetings scheduled for 2017. Indeed I was very tempted to go to Mallory but having not seen the GT Package this season it was all systems go for Donington early on Sunday morning.
It was a good job I did arrive early at the track as queues were already starting to build..not only for the car parks but also at the ticket booth. Yet again Donington were woefully caught out by the size of the crowd and I heard of half-hour queuing times just to buy a ticket later in the morning! Not good and the pedestrian entry to the circuit has really got to be moved for the 2018 season...it was very dangerous walking through the paddock at the end of the meeting with articulated lorries and general paddock traffic buzzing around.
Anyway back to the actual racing....! The first race of the day actually turned out to be the best race of the day in my opinion and that was the first of the 2 Ginetta GT5 Challenge encounters. a superb 3 car lead battle between Lewis Brown, Shane Stoney & Max Bird raged for almost all of the race until Bird spun out late on at the Old Hairpin. The second race of the day was a little tamer with Ryan Hadfield romping home and 3rd place for Brown clinching him the Championship title.
Further Ginetta racing came in the shape of a double header for the Ginetta Racing Drivers Club +....I'm not entirely sure why there is a + but the racing was definitely not a - as 32 cars were on the grid and provided some good action. The Ginetta staircase is in healthy shape and the aspiring driver can progress through the ranks, and with Ginetta producing a LMP1 car for next year, maybe onto the highest echelons of sportscar racing without racing any other marque!
Only 14 cars for the finale of the BRDC Formula 3 championship but it was a case of quality over quantity indeed. One had to feel sorry for Nicolaj Kjaergaard in race 1, who was on course for his first win of the year until he was punted off at Redgate on the last lap by Callan O'Keefe. A grateful Jordan Cane inherited the lead and won the race as O'Keefe suffered wing damage in the incident. Enaam Ahmed has dominated the season this year and it was he who triumphed in the final race...Ahmed shadowed Cameron Das closely and pounced on Das at the Melbourne Hairpin with 4 laps left.
22 cars took part in the pair of Volkswagen Cup races which proved to be unusually tame affairs...The varied makes of VW have sadly gone these days with the grid made up of Scirocco's and Golf's....plus strangeley a couple of Audi TT's!
Time for someone to finf a Beetle of a Caddy van in a barn somewhere and bring it out of retirement!!
9 GT3 and 17 GT4 cars took part in the 2 hour British GT showdown...Interest pre-race was in the GT3 championship with the Team Parker Bentley of Rick Parfitt Jr. & Seb Morris vying for the crown with the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan of Jon Minshaw & Phil Keen. At the start Minshaw was very keen to get ahead but spun at The Esses and dropped to the rear of the GT3 field. The Huracan crew battled back to 3rd at the end (then subsequently disqualified for overtaking under yellow flags) so the title headed the way of the Bentley boys. The actual race was won very comfortably by the TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage of Derek Johnston/Jonny Adam ahead of team-mates Mark Farmer/Jon Barnes. The GT4 class was won by the McLaren 570S of Graham Johnson/Mike Robinson. The popularity of GT4 is clearly evident in British GT...but with talk of split grids for next year the GT3 ranks certainly need a boost domestically in 2018. The enormous success of Blancpain GT has somewhat diluted the domestic championship in recent years.
Brett Smith dominated both Mini Challenge races and his British Touring Car outings must surely have helped him as he his the 2017 Mini Challenge champion. The F56 JCW Mini is a very forgiving race car...countless times drivers entered the Old Hairpin sideways but the good old Mini corrected itself and straightened itself out!
A rare chance to showcase itself on a promoted package saw a healthy 24 car grid of OSS Sportscars. Duncan Williams won race 1 in his Juno but was passed on the very last lap in race 2 by Mike Jenvey's Jenvey-Gunn. Finishing at 6.47pm the last few laps took place in rapidly descending darkness and signalled the end of a busy days racing.
I really enjoyed the meeting and it was good to see the country's second biggest package in the flesh for the first time this year. One interesting point...a marshal was positioned atop the the end of Starkeys Bridge overlooking the point where Billy Monger suffered his appalling accident back in April. Presumably there to spot any incidents and it'll be interesting to see if there is a marshal positioned there at future meetings.
Admission on the gate was £20 and I didn't buy a programme as I printed off the entry lists from a thing called "The Internet"......!