BGTC: Double win for Rollcentre Mosler at Oulton Park

Driver lineup of Stuart Hall and Dan Brown scored a double victory at the first two rounds of the Avon Tyres British GT Championship at Oulton Park Chesshire.

Brown commented, "The team told me to push as hard as I could in the early laps, and that's what I did, but I was a bit surprised to find myself as far ahead as I did."

The pair driving the Rollcentre Racing GT3 Mosler MT900 took the first race with relative ease, leading from start to finish. The 17 year old Brown making his debut in the series held off regular competitor David Jones in the GT3 Ascari KZR1 and built up a 9 second lead before handing over to Rollcentre regular Hall.

Hall widened the lead to 12 seconds but then eased off, managing the gap to the chasing Ascari nicely. He was to eventually cross the line with a comfortable margin of around 7.6 seconds ahead of the Ascari now with the second of the Jones brothers, Godfrey, at the controls.

"It was a 'Sunday afternoon' drive for me," Hall commented. "Daniel did a good job early on and handed the car over in good shape."

The next closest competitor was the Rosso Verde-UCB Ferrari of Hector Lester and Allan Simonsen which was some 30 seconds further back. The Ferarri with Simonsen at the wheel fought hard in the closing stages to hold off the hard charging ABG Viper with Aaron Scott on board. The Viper encountered fuel pressure problems on the last but one lap and limped home in 6th place.

Duncan Cameron/Matt Griffin in the MTech Ferrari F430 picked up the 4th place followed by the Eddy Renard / Vincent Vosse DBRS9 Aston Martin of the Beechdean/Barwell team which clearly had some sort of misfire and did well to claim 5th under the circumstances.

GT4 honours momentarily went to the Rob Austin Racing Ginetta in the hands of Hunter Abbott and Gary Simms. Abbott seemingly unfazed by the enormous accident he suffered at the same track in the opening round of the series last year crossed the line class leader but was later excluded for a technical infringement. This handed the class win to 2nd place GT4 finishers, Jody Firth/Nigel Moore, in another Ginetta G50.

The only Supersports class competitor the KTM X-Bow took tenth overall for Marcus Clutton and Phil Keen.

The second round saw the Mosler finish at the head of the field yet again but this time it was more of a fight at least for the first half of the race. The Simonsen/ Lester Ferrari with Simonsen taking the first stint took Hall's Mosler at the start of the race. Hall hung on to the tailpipe of the lead car until the pitstop where team mate Brown continued to shadow Lester now in the lead F430. However Lester spun the car leaving Brown an easy sprint to the line with a 21 second lead.

"I was a bit surprised when Hector went off, because I hadn't put him under any pressure at that point," Brown said. "But I was also concerned because it might have meant a safety car period and that would have cut my lead."

David Jones then claimed yet another 2nd place finish in his Ascari, Wilkins in the Viper came 3rd while Lester had to settle for 4th after such a promising start for the team.

Cameron came past the line in 5th in the MTech Ferrari with the Chris Hyman/Paul Warren Chad Racing Ferrari was gifted 6th when the Beechdean Aston Martin failed to complete the last lap.

In GT4 Firth and Moore took a second class win for Team WFR, beating Richard Sykes and Lawrence Tomlinson, with Abbott and Simms taking 3rd.

The KTM X-BOW, driven by Keen and Clutton had literally no opposition in the new Super Sport class but did have a few battles with the GT4 class cars.

The well documented issues with the Donnington track work has lead to the next round of the Avon Tyres British GT championship being postponed. The next outing for the cars will be at the Spa circuit in Belgium on the 9th and 10th of May 2009.