Whight & Bentwood just miss out on Spa British GT Podium

Strong showing for Barwell-Cadena Aston (10 June 2010)

The Barwell-Cadena Aston Martin DBRS9 of Paul Whight/Michael Bentwood contested the 2.5 hour British GT race at Spa last weekend, claiming a hard fought fourth place. They were less than four seconds off claiming another podium finish, however, when Bentwood just ran out of time in his pursuit of the 3^rd-placed Trackspeed Porsche which he had been catching by up to six seconds a lap in the last half hour of the race.

There was an extremely high-quality entry for the British GT series’ annual visit to the fabulous seven kilometre Spa Grand Prix track, which was held under beautiful blue skies and a baking hot sun, with six different top GT3 racing Marques being represented. To make it even more spectacular, the British GT and Belcar (Belgian) GT races were being run at the same time, meaning a combined field of no less than 64 GT cars would be blasting around the track for 150 minutes. As well as the usual cluster of professional drivers in British GT, there were some new top quality additions for Spa, including Porsche factory GT star Richard Westbrook in a Trackspeed car, and Peter Kox in a new factory Reiter Lamborghini LP560. This was the first time a top GT pro has driven the new Lambo this year, and unfortunately it showed that the car clearly hasn’t been properly performance balanced yet. Kox romped to pole position and then he and his amateur partner dominated the race, setting a fastest lap nearly three seconds a lap quicker than all the pros in the other cars...! With this fact in mind, the real ‘race’ between the British GT regular runners was for second position.

Both Paul and Michael were enjoying the high-speed grip of the DBRS9 during qualifying, and Michael was confident of fighting the other leading pros for ‘GT3 Class’ pole position (behind the Lamborghini). Unfortunately we were disappointed not to show the full speed of the Barwell-Cadena DBRS9, as on his quickest flying lap Michael got baulked massively by a slower car at the super-fast Blanchimont corner, the data showing that this cost him 1.5 seconds to his previous best lap through that corner. This put him fifth on the grid, whereas a clean lap would have almost certainly secured at least third behind the Westbrook Porsche and the Kox Lambo.

At the rolling start of the 150 minute encounter, Michael negated his qualifying misfortune immediately with a cracking getaway that very nearly vaulted the Barwell-Cadena Aston straight up to second spot. Westbrook just hung on to the place as they ran side-by-side down the hill towards Eau Rouge, however, and the Porsche driver and Michael then set about reeling in the Gallardo which was being driven by amateur Marc Hayek. Hayek’s pace was not sufficient to keep the baying pack of British GT professionals behind, and soon the fight at the front was a three-way affair between Westbrook, Bentwood and the Ferrari of Matt Griffin. In super-hot conditions the mid-engined cars were looking after their tyres a bit better than the front and rear-engined machines, and Griffin was able to get past both Michael and Westbrook to take the lead. Michael was still able to keep the rest of the Ferraris at bay, however, and soon the race settled down with the Aston holding a comfortable third place.

Our strategy was to run Michael as long as possible on the fuel, as if there was a safety car period during our re-fuelling ‘window’ then we would gain by making the first scheduled stop under safety car conditions. We didn’t get lucky this time, however, and thus Michael came in for a routine stop just past the hour mark. The Barwell crew re-fuelled the car and fitted four new Avon tyres in its usual slick fashion, and Paul blasted out of the pits to rejoin the fray. By this time we had slipped back to fourth overall, as Hayek had pitted the Lamborghini early on and Kox had been clawing back the deficit to the leaders in huge chunks per lap, jumping back to second behind the yet-to-stop Westbrook Porsche.

With the British GT and Belcar GT races being run at the same time, the British cars were started 40 seconds behind the Belgians. Added to this mix were also the British Aston Martin GT4 Challenge contenders, and thus after an hour of racing and pit stops you had a total of 64 cars of varying speeds with both amateur and pro drivers all mixed together on the track. This led to some hairy moments when a gaggle of cars all arrived at the same piece of track together, and inevitably led to cars losing time in such situations. Paul was unluckily on the receiving end of a few of these during the opening few laps of his stint, and this put the Olly Bryant/Oliver Morley Porsche on his tail.

The Porsche then took advantage of another ‘traffic’ situation to sneak past the Barwell-Cadena Aston and claim fourth place. A lap later, however, the Bryant/Morley Porsche then got baulked by a slower car going into the final chicane before the start/finish straight. Paul took advantage this time and jinked to the left of the Porsche and started to outdrag it on the exit of the corner, only to be faced moments later with yellow ‘safety car’ flags being waved on the straight for a crash further round the lap. Unfortunately for Paul, he had not quite got fully past the Porsche before the finish line and cut the timekeepers beam just 3/100ths of a second after it. His momentum then took him past, but he had now moved ahead of the Porsche with the race under Safety Car conditions, which is not allowed and punishable by a ‘drive-through’ of the pit lane at 60kmh – which has to be taken under full ‘green’ racing conditions after the safety car period (costing around 30 seconds). This was extremely unlucky for Paul and the team, and we had to take a harsh penalty considering the circumstances of the situation.

To add to our frustration, we also weren’t able to take our second pit stop under the safety car as there was still too long until the end of the race for us to make it on a tank of fuel. This put us at a disadvantage to both the Porsches and the Lamborghini, as both of these cars were able to use their bigger tank size and superior fuel efficiency to make an early stop under the safety car.

Fortunately for us the bad luck was shared by the MTECH Ferrari of Griffin/Cameron, which came into the pits with a time-consuming puncture and thus dropped behind us again. The combined effect of this, the safety car period and the drive-through penalty, meant that Michael found himself in fourth position, 52 seconds behind the Bryant/Morley Porsche, with 13 laps of the race remaining. This meant that he had to be over 4 seconds a lap faster – on every lap – than the Morley-driven car, in order to have a chance to be with him and overtake him on the last lap...

This was a mighty task for Bentwood to undertake, but he got stuck into it with vigour, whilst being egged on fervently over the radio by team chief Mark Lemmer! Undoubtedly traffic would play a key role in this effort, and Michael knew that he had to be brave but mindful not to risk the car. With five laps left he was on course to just get on the tail of the Porsche by the finish, but he needed to make better inroads into the gap on each lap to have a shot at passing it. He gained an amazing 10 seconds in just two laps, and the Barwell-Cadena crew started to sniff a podium, but then traffic restricted him to just a one second gain on another lap. In the end his deficit was 3.8 seconds, and we needed just one more lap to get the job done, but it had been a great effort all the same. We can also count it as a ‘moral’ podium, once you remove the ‘GT1’ Lamborghini from the GT3 results...!

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