British GT 2020 - LIVE - Round 6 - Donington Park

british gt championship with the second visit of the year to the magnificent grand prix circuit at donington park we were here just over a month ago in very different conditions this afternoon the sun is out the temperature is in the mid-20s and the racing action should be every bit as entertaining as it was on our first visit to the leicestershire venue uh over a three-hour race the first of two three-hour races this season as we make up for lost time in this slightly strange 22 20 20 calendar and it should be a really fascinating race with multiple strategies set to play out a really really closely matched grid and a championship that is still even at this late stage absolutely wide open well my name is andy mchugh and i'm delighted to say i'm joined by graham johnson on co-coms for this race and graham this three-hour race is not new to british gt but it is the first time in quite a while that we've had a three-hour race here at donington park what unique challenges does that extra hour uh add in to the drivers it makes an enormous challenge it really does make a huge change the uh the strategy that happens where where you used to do an hour guaranteed now you're trying to go safety car hunting you're trying to get one out and make sure that you capitalize on a safety car window so you'll leave your driver out as long as you can if the fuel tank will last long enough and some of these cars will go up to an hour and a quarter you'll try and get that hour and a quarter out of them the only trouble is if you've got a pro am pairing and one of those drivers isn't that competitive you're losing a second a lap okay it's only a second well hang on a moment you're doing 30 40 laps you're talking 40 seconds this race won't actually really start to unfold until the last hour so stick with it uh yeah absolutely these longer races do tend to come right down to the very wire and that is why we love them well we are up here in the comedy box outside the weather is pretty pleasant and it's attracted a nice crowd of people but down in the heart of all of the action we welcome a new member of our presenting team kelvin fletcher our usual presenter sadly can't be with us this weekend due to uh other work commitments but we have drafted in the uh brilliant bryn lucas to take his place and bryn is right down there on the grid ahead of the start of this race cool talk about building me up there andy that's uh that's a hard thing to top now looking around here it is beautiful weather it's not really hot so that's going to be interesting to see how other cars do out on track of course a lot of racing happened today so the track isn't green by any means we're going to have a chat it says adjusting his mask very very soon to julian peniston hill who is from intelligent money and we got a big announcement really about the sponsorship of the championship so can't wait to chat to him i'm looking over my shoulder as well i cannot wait to see a huge variety of supercars coming onto the grid behind me it is something i i can't really uh believe i'm pinching myself so much right now and a three hour race coming up i'm on cloud nine yeah it's going to be good this isn't it i think and uh i was saying earlier on to you graeme i'm a little bit jealous of prim because especially in this long race where strategy is going to play such an important path the pit lane is the place to be because that ultimately is where this race could be won or lost yeah to be honest with you i'm jealous of the whole thing this is this is a little bit like for me watching an adult movie uh it's nice to watch but you'd rather be taking part in the accident you know i'm a race driver and i've been racing for 18 years and being in the pit lane yeah absolutely better than being in a comms box being in the race car itself that's where it really that's where the fun is and i was watching the uh the formula one the other day when pierre gasly won his race his first race and i watched the pure emotion that came out of him and i i i felt that and i tell you what you've unless you've raced you'll never know what it feels like yeah no it's it's it's quite an experience isn't it and uh maybe we'll see some of that raw emotion a little bit later on today depending on who we see on the top step of the podium right then let's head back down to bryn then who's got a very special guest to have a chat to on the grid yeah very very special guest indeed julian peniston hill here from intelligent money and julian what a big announcement we had five-year extension to the sponsorship contract what's your reasoning behind that of course covered 19 very very unusual times uh yes absolutely and that is what my reasoning behind it um you know it's uncertain times and so i wanted to do something to add a degree of certainty to a race i absolutely or a championship i absolutely love so that was one of the main reasons the impact of this uncertainty yeah and for you we're looking at this championship for the future then obviously if you've got your mindset on five more years you must be thinking it's going to grow and grow and grow to me this is the beginning yeah for the first five years uh the beginning so yeah absolutely well we like the sound of that that's for sure now why in particular the british gt championship um there's many many reasons um one it's in my blood we're not a faceless corporate sponsor uh and the others the synergies between the two events what we do is intelligent money and what everyone all the teams here do british gt it's all about teamwork technology communication support to deliver the highest possible levels of performance without taking unnecessary risks and so it's the same thing yeah but it's not your only connection is it's it's a petrol heads in the world you know piston heads and a whole lot more talk us through that sort of link and why why the motorsport is in your blood uh it always has been uh and it is my daughter's only 15 and it's already getting into her blood um but yeah piston heads was our first corporate sponsorship their finance section um followed by pure gt uh and of course what else um [Music] we're actually launching our own club level racing team intelligent kind of racing next year yeah tv our investment as well and i've taken a small shell looking at the tdr ruby which is 70 years worth of um british sports car history i mean it's all part of it you know it is an essential part of my life i would uh i need it like i need oxygen yeah absolutely now you mentioned there's all the similarities between british gt and the teams and how they work together and intelligent money as well is that something you focusing on when you look at these sort of investments you think how's it going to work together do they have similarities uh yes i do to a degree but a lot of it is just the enjoyment of it you know uh being fortunate enough to be in the position to um to do this is one thing but doing it because you absolutely love it is something completely different what about you getting into one of these cars and racing what about you getting into one of the cars and having a little go around the track um i was actually offered to get in that one earlier um but um uh maybe later yeah just just sit and watch it's a lot easier isn't it a lot easier thank you so much julian there you go julian giving us his time there what an amazing announcement there you go andy and graham five four years sponsorship not bad exactly which graham i think is a real advert for the strength of this championship now to have a title sponsor in the first place is great news and to have a title sponsor that is making that long-term commitment to the championship it goes to show that this championship is on the right track isn't it it does and this championship is i've been in this championship for five years myself and it's just gone from strength to strength to strength and i have to say hats off to sro the series organizers have been on such a great show we're in the middle of a pandemic and here what have we got 24 cars on the grid we've got millions of pounds worth of cars on the grid and we've got race fans here too haven't we andy uh we have lots of them basking in the sunshine all socially distancing out in the wide open spaces at dodington park and getting ready to enjoy a great race well this is the car that will start from pole position not for the first time this year not for the second time this year the third time this year because the jensen team rocket rjn mclaren has been dominant in qualifying this year and uh james baldwin and michael o'brien did another sensational job in qualifying yesterday to put this car at the very front of the grid now you were saying to me earlier on uh or it might have been bryn that was saying actually that that team and james in particular had sort of targeted the top five this year they could be top five in the points at the end of the year he said that would be amazing now their mindset has changed they're gunning for the title and quite rightly so they're third in the points they've got a race win they've got another podium as well which they had last time at brands hatch a race they arguably should have won as well they're 100 in championship contention yeah well i'm going to take full credit because i was i was michael o'brien yeah that's not like me look i i was working with michael last year and uh his speed is never in doubt sometimes he's lack confidence in himself and i think this year i had dinner with him last night and he's confident he's he's he's not the tallest guy but he's grown in stature and he really is doing a tremendous job yeah it's uh it's fantastic to see this great story to follow isn't it uh as we've gone through the year now another great story this weekend is a returning face to the championship this car is making its first appearance of the year it's the 22 valve motorsport mclaren and one of the drivers is making a very welcome return that is the driver or a hughes yeah really really good to be back um yeah it's been been a while since sort of uh raced as a as a full-time profession so it's um yeah it's coming to a track with knowing that you're going to compete is very different to coming you know whether it's coaching or doing something else that's that's i've been around obviously a lot in the last few years but from a with a coaching role to do and uh but coming up coming back as a full-on competitor is a different feeling all together and it's i love it i love it i've missed it i have to be a little well quite selfless in lots of respects as i said before it's a combined race but it's also a big part of doing this event is to to aid yann's development you know it's a it's a longer term thing i'm not we're not just looking at the end result of this race it's a stepping stone to to aid his development in you when you when you put into a more competitive environment that naturally drags more performance out of you and you just absorb so much more uh information i think we can get a you know a very respectable result i do believe that between us otherwise we wouldn't be here you we don't want to just be here to make up numbers it's it's but first and foremost it's about development and you know if if we have a a strong strong qualifying early part of the race keep out of trouble we we will get a decent result very much look forward to what the race brings really well fantastic to have warren hughes back in the championship a really well regarded driver in british and international motorsport be fascinating to see how they get on in their first race back well from mclaren let's turn our attention now to mercedes and the team that are second place in the championship second place on the grid as well ram racing uh they missed out on the podium last time at brown's hatch but with no success penalty today that 69 car i reckon could be a contender and down there to have a word with one of the drivers patrick kuyala is bryn lucas yeah absolutely a contender indeed so patrick we're just talking that you have no success penalty here and there's a long straight down there a lot of time back ahead of you you've got a car there to your right hand side that has got a little bit of a time penalty so what are your thoughts ahead of the race well i guess a clean race is important we have a good car just got to keep our head down and yeah focus on the race clean race like i said and then yeah we'll see after three hours over here and what about your teammate just just one row behind you as well do you have a strategy for both cars or are you just focused on your own i'm focused on my own yeah honestly there you go what about your teammate then sitting in the car there sam he's got to do a decent job from the start so that when you you change over you've got a nice hopefully a lead to to protect but if anything unusual happens what's the strategy is it all worked out it's it's all planned so so i certainly wise we're good and i'm not worried about some somebody's going to do a good job he's good in the start and yeah fingers crossed everything goes well absolutely well thank you very much and good luck as well there you go patrick giving us the download it's all worked out and hopefully goes to plan that sounds easy really doesn't it i know i know i shouldn't really say this because i i always put the mockers on teams when i shouldn't but i really do think that car's got a good chance today no success penalty it's a good mercedes circuit this and patrick and sam both have been on it all weekend yeah i've been really impressed with sam you know he's been the series now for a couple of years he was a bronze rated driver he was an am racer now he's a silver that's that's an aspiring professional driver he's quite young he's only about 25 26 and uh uh he really does he's working hard to get good at this and if you watched his pace here last time he was effectively on the pro pace he was and in the ram team they've got some really good people the engineer on the car is jeff kingston jeff engineered me to the 2016 title i know him very well he's very talented and i think we're seeing this car which does suit this circuit as you say there's not that many long straights and the car isn't that fast in a straight line but it my god it's getting the corners around the uh under braking so yeah totally agree that could be a real contender for the win now third on the grid our barbell motorsport this is the highest placed of the barwell cars on the grid it's the adam balance started and phil keane shared uh carl that was supposed to win the championship this year wasn't it tf sport didn't come back this was their year but brandt's hatch did not go to plan no adam i think he's i've raced against adam he's a really quick driver um and i think he's getting a little bit uh uh caught up on the pressure that's being put on him i think he knows that it was his title to lose and they started off superbly honestly genuinely on his day he can be as fast as as almost as fast as a pro i mean phil keane is a teammate my god i mean that is a that is a benchmark um but he really can hold his own but we've seen we've talked about this a lot you and i andy in the bar and the psychology of racing 10 hands and feet talent and it's 90 in your head and you need to have a strong head and when there's this much pressure on you when there are cameras in your face when there's a lamborghini factory driver driving alongside you it can get to you and your arms lock and tense up and that costs temps so look let's see how he goes as long as he can relax into this they should have won the title last year i think they still can win this year but adam needs to do what he does well which is drive fast and worry about nothing else fourth in the championship of the 72 car but it's the sister car number 78 started by rob collard today we'll hand over to sandy mitchell at the first pit stop that leads the championship they got their first victory um of the year at brands hatch last time out which was a long time coming it was a really really popular victory and we were able to catch up with rob collar to discuss that amongst other things ahead of the race my transition to british gt3 has been you know a breath of fresh air really for me like in my career um done touring cars for many many years but i felt um i got as far as i could go with it and i just wanted to change and i've been watching both my sons ricky and jordan both do gt4 and gt3 over the last few years and thought you know i should be doing this so i'm really pleased to join barwell as a race team i've known the owner for a long time used to race touring cars against him back in the production touring car days so me and mark go back a long way i'm very very fortunate to have such a great teammate as sandy mitchell yeah he's a real real shining light in the gt world um and yeah he's he's a guy that everybody wants to be at the moment you know i'm just hanging on to his shirt tales most of the time in in practice and qualifying so it's good for me to have his data it's helping me improve my driving my style because i've got something some reference and i've got a long way to match his face 2017 was the last time i let the touring car championship so to be in gt's and be leading my um leading the championship at this point in the silver class and overall is fantastic and we've got a good lead as well 16 points so um it's it really is a you know a lovely position to be in but when you're in that position sometimes you know yeah you're under a little bit of pressure towards deliver and um you're the person everybody's got a beat so if we can come out this weekend you know sort of still with it with a lead i think that'd be very good we've got a 20-second time penalty to serve on sunday um and that's going to be a really really sort of hard hard sort of penalty to get over 20 seconds around donington park is a long time well 20 seconds is a long time but they were quick here in august when we last raced at bobington park and i'm sure they're going to be in contention again today here's how they lined up them for round number six for the intelligent buddy british gt championship his team gets team rocket rjn on pole position with james baldwin starting the car and sam duhan second in the championship second on the grid here today row two for the second first of the barbell cars number 72 and ian loggie in the second of the ram racing mercedes and then on the third row of the grid rob carl our championship leader for barwell has mike ligo in the wpi motorsport lamborghini for company on row three row four for lewis proctor and angus fender two mclarens one from optimum one from two seas motorsport they're rounding out the top ten uh on the fifth row of the grid are richard williams in the stellar motor sport audi and richard neary in the team aberration mercedes outside that top ten then jordan went to the second two seas mclaren ahead of nick jones in the team park racing bentley that won here last time out after an inspired tire choice in race number two then it's stuart proctor in the valve motorsport mclaren already shared with joe osborne ahead of michael brown in the ultimate speed aston martin making its first appearance here this weekend then we're into gt4 academy motorsport won at brands hatch last time and their report position again here they're really coming on four with the mid part of the year the mustang got paul ahead of patrick matisson in the hhc motorsport mclaren then row two of gt4 sees the connor prior tf sport aston martin line up alongside the championship leading mclaren from hhc motorsport started by gus bowers then we have got daniel vaughn in the second tier faster martin mia flew it in the only pro-am entry in gt4 the both motorsport mclaren and then behind them we have jan klinglenberg klingelberg in the second bath mclaren ahead of century motorsports bmw then it's the 33 century motorsport bmw started by david whitmore with james kell in the speedworks toyota they had great problems in qualifying that's why they're at the back of the grid three hours of racing round number six of the intelligent money british gt championship bursts into life under the sunny skies at doddington park and it is my james baldwin on the inside line on the outside line there is santa hat there's contact further back to hands trying to get around the outside and there's more contact mike ligo goes around into the gravel jump in the wpi car and sam the hand spins as well santa has second in the championship pointing the wrong way out of red gate corner well this is the longest race of the year so far and it's the first time that we've had first lap collisions it's all kicked off through red gay corner it looks as though the number two car is held onto the race lead at 72 no it's the ram racing car it's a second 72 has also been delayed in all of that and dropped way way back it's still academy that lead in gt4 ahead of the two hc cars 58 ahead of 57 well that was not in the script was it graham yeah no no no do not lean on each other on the first corner of a 30-hour race and i watched it i'm pointing at the screen with you saying look that lambo is about to go give each other space there was room on the exit they could have done that and then i think sam possibly spun in sympathy i'm not sure what happened there but that car looks stuck that we could we see a safety car now yes right okay let honestly i think we'll probably see some pit stops get out your get your am driver out get your pro driver in they can do a hundred minutes okay that's an hour and 40 minutes that means that your ad only has to do an hour and 20 minutes often you're in the case of stuart proctor and joe osborne joe's two two and a half seconds left faster i i think we're gonna probably see in a second someone pull into the pit lane yes because there is no pit window you have to make three pit stops you have to make three driver changes you can do them whenever you like as long as neither driver does more than a hundred minutes and i thought optimum we're going to die for the pit lane bar well do adam ballon is in the first to blink they did this a few years ago at silverstone pitted at the end of lap one and it was an inspired decision then so is this and he'd also come both of the tf sports aston martin so you're absolutely right although the aston martins remember are still recovering it surprises me i thought i would see mia floyd in the valve motorsport car stop they're obviously not ready yet look what we do in the garage in the truck for hours after hours is go through loads of what-if scenarios what if it's a safety car after this amount of time all of these guys know how long their fuel will last how long they can go in a stim they obviously know what tf something that the other teams don't know because they've pitted two very quick drivers putting the other two quick drivers so they've got a strategy here that probably isn't immediately obvious to everyone yeah well it'll play out over three hours i suppose now this is what happened so ignore the bodywork flying in the background for now let's focus on the 18 lamborghini which is on the outside line and it's going to be contact with the number 10 car which was started by jordan whitman in venice he was also side by side with lewis proctor and yeah i'm not entirely sure how santa had ended up spinning how do you read that just three cards going for a gap that wasn't really there i mean there was room on the exit wasn't there so there could have been he could have released the steering wheel gonna be a bit wider i'm not gonna blame him though because he got lent on by the two seas car i think if they're blamed to be attributed to she should have got out the throttle and give him room you know he wasn't gonna get through two cars it's too much of a small gap i'm gonna guess that sam got lent on on the exit that's unusual to drop it like that we've got tc we've got traction control on these cars so normally you wouldn't power oversee around like that and he's too good for that i hope i hope i'm right when i'm saying so i'm gonna assume that someone lent on the back of him and unsettled the car that is a possibility we'll see if we can get another angle of that for you maybe uh let's take stock of the situation then safety car is coming in this lap actually so we don't have much time to catch our breath james baldwin leads from pole position ian logging is up to second rob collard the championship leader is third though is procter his fourth and angus fender is fifth for two seas motorsport that's the number nine car not the number 10 that was involved in that contact in gt4 mccauley leads in the academy mustang he's actually got a gt3 car between himself then and patrick matias in second and gus powers third 58 and 57 the two hhc motorsport mclarens second and third in gt4 the safety car is in james baldwin floors the throttle and as we go into that number three of the race we are starting again now the aston martins are still in the pit lane they're going to lose a lap as a result of this early pit strategy that adds further confusion to the mixers louise proctor has a look at the inside of rob collard for third position into redgate corner this early safety guard has really disrupted the rhythm of the race hasn't it they haven't had time to warm themselves up gradually if they got there it was a sudden rush of adrenaline then it all stops and then a lot later they're straight back on it again you're right and i'm about to go into a bit of a rant andy because loggie's going to make a mistake here he's going to try and hold on to second he was defending but look in the nicest possible way he's not as quick as the cars behind him it's a three hour a three hour race easy for me to say and what he needs to do is not lose time and every bit of defense that he does he will lose time and that will come back and haunt them the team in two and a half hours two and three quarter hours time you can see already though he's he's desperate to hold on to that second place if it were me i'd be focusing on not losing time yes but we saw him do this to bran's hatch last time it was a pretty solid defense that he put up and it definitely cost them a lot of time and that's a big part of the reason that the number two car was able to pull out a massive lead and of course we're now in a very similar situation again here today number two car getting away six car in second is a bit of a road block easier to overtake here at donington park i'd imagine so there's maybe more of a chance that a rob collard or a lewis proctor might be able to break through his defenses yeah i think you're right the two hairpins so the corners we've just gone round are the only places where there's heavy braking zones everywhere else it's all about trying to carry corner speed and so if you can carry as much corner speed as you can roll the momentum into the high speed corners you get a better exit and get a run on them so it's not going on the brakes here only at the two hairpins here it's done you out drag them from getting a better exit santa han here then is now getting past the gt4 leader so they are now at least ahead of the gt4 pack they did not lose a lap crucially uh the wpi car did that lose a lap let me just have a little look back uh yes it did at least lost at least one baby so that is their race kind of over before it really began which is a shame for a car that won here at uh in august the last time we visited donington park but at least the 69 i told you i shouldn't have tipped them to win the ratio by on the grid uh they are at least on the lead lap and it is a long race they're still in contention yeah they are still in contention you know i gave vloggy a bit of a hard time but the person that actually is defending is is rob collard he's got into touring car mode uh sprint race mode and he's defending from procter who i'm quite impressed with lewis has struggled at times in this mclaren he was a second slower than his teammate in qualifying which would have hurt trust me that would have hurt him they're both trying to get a factory drive with mclaren but he's doing a fantastic job of actually giving rob collard a very difficult time he might get through uh and rob collard of course also has to be mindful of this championship lead that he's got he knows okay this is not the last round of the championship as it normally would be here in september at doddington park but uh he still knows that he can't really afford uh to have any damage or problems in this race that would cost him the championship lead so james baldwin leads by 2.4 seconds then over he and logging in second bob collard is third for barbell fourth place lewis proctor in the optimal mclaren then two two seas card number nine angus fender ahead of number 10 jordan wit richard williams for stella motorsport is it celebratory is seventh ahead of richard neary stuart proctor and um nick jones rounding out the top ten in gt4 still cowley from atheism from bowers mia flew it is fourth position and james kell there you can see in the toes right behind her up into fifth position the toes are gaining ground they had a cracked brake disc in qualify which stopped them getting out in session two so they automatically had to start from the back of the gt4 grid and that total was quick here a month ago and it looks so it's got the pace again here today yeah i mean look honestly if you said i could drive any of the gt4 cars on the grid right now i'm going to choose the toyota i think it's the fastest car on the grid i do they struggled a little bit in qualifying when we were here last time in the last sector so perhaps they were struggling under the brakes a little bit but that car is the quickest car on the grid without a doubt something i want to point out to you andy is phil keane back in 21st position but look at his lap time they've put their pro in they got adam out this is what i was talking about earlier i think they're on the lead lap they're just about on the lead lap what are they just over one minute and seven seconds behind this will play out very very very well for the barwell car yes because that car lost ground at the start adam ballen was held up by the spin at the from the adam allen the first corner he may have even been held up by mike ligo spin too the idea of those incidents by the way all under investigation so car 18 under investigation also incidents involving car 2 and 69 so this car the ram racing car of sam dahan it must have been contact with james baldwin the race leader we didn't catch it unfortunately first time around but it must have been contact with the mclaren and that is under investigation as well we'll keep you posted uh if we hear any developments on that um back to phil keem oh uh phil keane uh yeah adabala lost a load of ground he was stuck in the pack he was never going to be able to race his way back to the front because the cards are all too easily matched he's now driver against lots of silver drivers so they've pitted him they've got phil keane in and now when everyone else stops that car might well come out as the race leader let's see what happens so sam's trying to hang it on the outside james has understandably ran him out wide now that there's nothing wrong there sam tried to hang it on the outside of lap one over three hour race and he dropped it you know what inexcusable yeah about yes uh yes avoidable definitely and i think uh it would be harsh if sam would be given a penalty uh michael would have given a penalty but we've seen it before we'll let peter daley are very capable clerk of the course uh make the decisions and uh he should have waited because he's in championship contention and he he's he's going for the lead now we know how quick james baldwin is we know sam's quit too and i think they could have worked together to pull away together and he's hung it out there got it just a little too close to the loose stuff to the gravel and he's gone round all of his own accord and uh i'd be surprised if there's a penalty on that he's already taken his penalty anyway well yes he has rather hasn't he is 11th place now slam the hound 16.7 seconds off the race lead we are watching the number nine car here and spend a fifth position two seas motorsport could do with a good result really couldn't they they've had the speed all year long we say this every race right from the go at alton park they were leading the way uh in the first race of the weekend with the number 10 car and they were given a pit lane penalty and that took them out of contention two season i think this weekend maybe that car looks good looks as though it could be a contender for a race win no further action by the way with any of those incidents so car 18 no further action car 69 and two no further action so uh peter daley agrees with you graham uh no need for a penalty yeah good that's the right order there look i'm going to go on about phil keane again because whilst we're watching this race phil keane is pumping in one minute 27.5 that's three laps that were faster than anyone in a row the only other car in the 27s is baldwin everyone else andy they're doing 29s he's slapping up to two seconds a lot quicker than anyone now there he is stuck back in 21st position i think we're going to see him come right forward when we look at the gt4 let's look at uh a cow county started the season and i'm gonna be honest i wasn't overly impressed the job he did at bran's hatch i could not believe that win was thoroughly deserved and jordan albert who i know well i've raced against him for the title actually in 16. he's a very very talented guard he never really got the break he deserved the the mustang is a fantastic car arguably has a very good balanced performance but look he starts to drive the thing well and cowley is coming on leaps and bounds in this car and matthias and as well hanging on in the hc he's showing a clean pair of hills isn't he to to bowers it's impressive they're championship leaders indeed they are and they will of course here at donington the 57 car in the sprint base a month ago uh patrick mathiason here is catching matt cowley he was quicker over the last couple of laps from the ford mustang in front academy definitely getting to grips with that car now remember they've moved across master martin to the ford it's the only mustang on the grid this year as well whereas last year there were the two multimatic cars there was the race performance car as well so they've got no one else's data to feed off it's gonna take you half a season to get to grips with the car and now here we are halfway through the season and they're setting the pace it can often be an advantage to being the only car on the grid because if you're driving it as everyone assumes that's as fast as it can go so you can get a better balance of performance they can punish the car uh less but we're on board here with gus bowers and and let's see what he how he gets on how he compares so he's turned a little late there running a little wide you need to be careful on track limits jonathan palmer the circuit owner is obsessed with his grass um and so yeah so here we go here look this is a fascinating battle this is two hams together nick jones who won here last time in the bentley and stuart proctor who's in his second ever british gt race uh he's only ever driven this car a handful of times last time he did the whole race from wet tires is his first race on sticks eyes and he's ahead of a former race winner yes and these were the two cars that did battle for the race lead in that race the second race at donington last time with the other drivers in it was scott malvin versus stuart uh stuart joe osborne um and it was the other way around the bentley ahead of the mclaren and joe said i was much much quicker until we got out of those hairpins and that meant he has so much torque yeah it just drags away from mclaren coming out of the corners now though that's what nick jones has got to use not to defend but to attack he's got to pick his moment and attack it a part of the circuit where that car is strong yeah and he is quicker i mean what did he go seven tenths of a second faster on the previous lap i think he does need to clear him stuart i know stuart i don't think he'll work make him work too hard for it stewart knows his job stuart's job is to bring that car home for one of the fastest mclaren drivers on the grid i mean joe was the quickest mclaren in qualifying yesterday but you have to remember that as a pro am pairing they carry less weight in the car and they carry about 40 kilos less than the silver silver parents and 40 kilos well what's that well actually genuinely three four five tenths of a second and whilst that doesn't sound much trust me if i'm too tempts off someone i'm furious if i'm three times off i retire i guess it can be frustrating and some circuits are harder to carry that weight out than others and of course if you end up this is something else they have to consider i suppose with the stint legs yes and phil keen is a prime example of this uh the number 72 lamborghini they've made this early pit stop phil keane um is going to be in the car now we presume for quite a long time that means they're going to have to keep the tires alive for a bit longer and okay then on a silver car but if a silver team were to try this that extra weight would make that job a little bit harder well adam balon has been in this car for a lap uh let's find out how he felt after that lap ring lucas is down at the bar well garage with him yeah i am indeed adam here that was a short-lived first lap for you tell us from your point of view what happened what you could see ahead well i was tucked up behind the mclaren the pole sitter and i think sam got a good start around the outside next thing we just got around regulate next thing i knew the spearing across the track i was going to go left and then it carried on steering i had to move right and just about missed it now we always see very quick strategies in this one because it's a stress that you and the team were discussed if there was an off straight away not with me i just do what i'm told so that's like so i just got told to box i boxed and when was the call then for you to come in was it immediately did you know i saw a halfway round and i was coming up the back straight okay [Music] you know they said just don't argue with stuff trying to drive fast that's my job last time [Music] [Music] yeah he i'm sure he's tired to rest after that super long stint that he's just completed but uh all joking aside i mean the driver is sometimes the last to know about these decisions aren't they they are what's interesting about adam other than that oh hold on what are we doing from second place off at the old hairpin this is major drama he's going to get the car going thankfully so no safety car that's a bit of his car on that's possibly left on the track as something ripped off the bottom of that car let's see what happens here and he lost he's gone he's not always he was there yes okay so he's just had a spin look he can recover from that um but i mean look his teammate right now will be absolutely furious with him as i keep saying it's a three hour race it's a marathon your job is to be in contention for the last half hour or so but anyway that's what we've talked about before without him so other than the fact that adam has a glorious mane does he got the best hair in the paddock and if it wasn't for covid i'd be giving him a stroke in his hair but look he's used to he's a businessman he's an incredibly successful businessman he founded innocent smoothie drinks and so he's a very wealthy man what did he say i just do as i'm told yeah and so these businessmen come into this environment and they effectively become employees for the first time in their life and and another point that's really important he has to and genuinely there's a thing he has to plan when he uses the toilet so before generally andy before you race you have to make sure that you're hydrated and you assume you're going to race for an hour but now he hasn't he doesn't know he's going to be in the car next so he'll be absolutely paranoid about drinking too much because if you drink too much and you need to use the lube when you're driving i'm telling you it costs you so much time and it's it's a genuine factor in endurance racing i don't yeah i can imagine and in motorsport commentary as well it can sometimes be a factor this is rob collard on board view of the optimal motorsport mclaren which was uh applying the pressure into the melbourne hem and not quite able to go through this is now the fight for second position rob collard has inherited p2 as much as uh patrick yellow won't be very happy uh sorry emma berman won't be very happy with the ian loggie i don't think james baldwin will be either because of course loggie was that quite handy buffer between the race leader and the rest of the silver cook entrance behind who have now been freed okay baldwin is eight and a half seconds up the road but i don't think he's gonna be taking the same amount of time out of them now no i mean but then again look at his pace james is so impressive he's in the 28s he's just had another 28 lap now whereas rob his last lap was a 30.1 and so i think we will see rob put his head down now i think probably probably he's managed to break lewis proctor's spirit and i think probably the next battle we're going to witness is this one what we're on board with now fender we're going into traffic as well and so look mia in in the balf mclaren held him up enormously there but then i'm telling you next proctor will get held up it depends where you catch people and it's luck and so look we're going to go into the old hairpin now it's a very fast call of fourth gear tuck it in don't take too much exit cub there's a sensor out there if you trigger that sensor and we can see track limits going off left right and center you get a time penalty you get 10 seconds if you keep doing it you get a drive-through penalty and so not going too wide is important and holding it in there is important i think as i say what we are here the car looks better to me on board than the optimum mclaren in front of it he's turning it in there's the rear of the car is absolutely glued but there's a bit more movement going on when lewis is driving you can see the car sliding a bit more so i think that fenders cars are a little better balance than uh than the optimum car both of these drivers of course are silver graded drivers so they're both their pace should be equal the weight of the car should be the same as well and just set up differently now this is drama for century motorsport the number 43 car which has had a bit of a torrid time this season ben hurst had started the car this is not though a mandatory pit stop we'll try and get brynn lucas on the case down there for century see what the problem is um not been a real year to remember for them has it so far century well they put ben green in the car at brown's hatch and the car came alive i think it was very good for bed and green's career nathan freaker owns that team talented racer in his own right he uh he runs a good team and that car is unquestionably quick you do need luck as well you know this is by the way fight for position that we're seeing here this is the 72 car overtaking 26 which is michael brown in his new ultimate speed aston martin brand new chassis that only two weeks old that aston martin this is already its second race meeting as well they were out in the gt cup here a couple or a week ago so they're getting some miles under their belt but michael shares the car with matt manderson the pro driver he is the am and they've just lost the position there to phil keane so phil keens by having made a pit stop has just moved up into 12th position the next car for phil to overtake is not for position but it is a quick car that is mike ligo in the wpi motorsport lamborghini now of course they weren't able to take advantage of that safety car to pit early and get the pro in because they were the course for the safety car by the time the car was pointed out to the gravel the race was restarting again the damage for them has been done though they are a lot down now the number 18 car and it's so hard in a field this competitive to get that back they're gonna have to try and roll the strategy dice if they can at some point later on yeah they are interesting to watch the the body language of that lamborghini of phil king's car it's actually moving around a lot it doesn't look that stable i'm not convinced that carl's set up as well as perhaps adam balon will want it to be so i'm interested to see what adam's place is in it it looks a little nervous it's turning it in it's under steering and then it's flicking a little bit into oversteer but then look at the pace of keem he's so quick he's if not every lap the fastest car it's every other lap and yet and that's going through traffic yeah this is seriously impressive but this is what we expect from phil keane this is what we expect from baldwin motorsports doddington park has not been a happy hunting ground for them in the past uh but uh they showed uh last time we were here that they have the pace around this place and phil keems showing it again uh right now says uh sam duham then in the 69 car so santa had his seventh position now he's picked up a few places uh since the restart his next target is gonna be uh richard williams in the stellar performance audi which is about two and a half seconds up the road from him no damage down to the car no major issue i suppose as they're uh in locking the covers to uh take night place away from uh from stuart proctor uh but uh yeah having confidently predicted that mercedes was gonna be the car to have here this weekend all of the mercedes at the front of the field seem to have run into trouble at least it is a three-hour race okay that means you probably shouldn't be hitting trouble that early in the race but at least you have time to fight back yeah and it's interesting to watch them both because they're both driving very quickly and you know why because they both made mistakes i tell you now that the ego is a wonderfully good thing to make you go faster you've made an error we've seen nick here making his way through traffic it's a new experience for him nick in the bentley he's used to being in the gt4 car that's why the gt4 cars coming back at him but he's he's used to it and i did a gt3 race here a couple of years back and it's such a different thing for you to experience you're used to looking in the mirror all of a sudden you're looking forward and there's a hesitation that nick will be getting used to being the overtaker rather than the overtake e and so i think he's adapted really really well actually it's uh that car is not easy to drive we've seen some talented drivers in the bentley and in the wet we know it's an absolute beast and he's doing a very nice job in the way he's getting on and scott's doing a superb job well let's head back down to the pit lane shall we we saw the 43 century motorsport bmw heading into the pits uh earlier on and uh hopefully to fill us in a bit more about what's going on down there is bryn lucas yeah thanks very much there andy i've got ben first here in the car when you had to come in then what was the problem with the car i assumed we had to have a brake issue or something the pedal was just going longer and longer and all of a sudden we couldn't stop anymore but you said you felt that around five minutes ago so you must have had a few laps trying to work out what the problem was yeah we had a few laps warning on the pedal going long and then all of a sudden we just couldn't continue anymore so time to bring it in so that be a break pressure problem or something more more concerning although that's quite a concerning problem i think we're gonna have to have a good look into it um could be heat could be pressure i was tucked up right behind the mclaren so not getting as much fresh air as normal so the brakes are usually very good on these cars could have been a faulty ditch or something from the manufacturer so everything can happen so three hour race hopefully we'll get back out there yeah not the greatest start but thanks very much for shouting to us good luck if you get out [Music] [Music] bottom of the story is this a particularly hard circuit on brakes i don't imagine it to be but then that final sector is all very stop start it's funny you know because there are some cars that seem to be hard on their brakes here i've never driven a car that's harder but i remember vividly the the mclaren in i think it's 2007. uh joe osborne who's normally sat here rather than me thanks for the job joe he uh he he lost the pedal the the the pads failed after an hour and a half round here so i think it's really about the heat there's not much space if long straights to dissipate the heat brakes need cooling so whilst they're not working that hard they don't have a huge amount of time to cool around here and that can lead to an awful lot more brake wear uh yeah that is a good point we've had a few break issues this weekend that's why i asked so i wonder if over a three hour race whether that's going to become a factor rob coleman here in second place still not quite able to match the lap times being set by uh james baldwin but they're not losing the same sort of time as they were when they were stuck behind ian loggie uh co-are still second ahead of lewis proctor and angus fender we're already ticking towards the half hour mark now those who have not taken advantage of that early safety car to pit they're going to go the full hour then i would imagine or certainly close to it because although they'd look to stick the pro in for as long as possible they do have this minimum driver time to think about that yeah what you want to do is get your pro in for a hundred minutes but it's so difficult to do that because you also want that safety car as i was saying but some cars will only just get to one hour so i know my mclaren 570 gt4 it will just do an hour but the 720 s the gt3 michael o'brien reckons it'll get to about an hour and 15. you will keep that drive room for that amount of time it's such a balancing act and all the planning in the world cannot possibly prepare you for what's going to unfold and you know what unfolded a safety car before we've gone around one corner exactly you can make all these elaborate plans but then a safety car or some other unforeseen situation can completely uh change your plan and don't forget that when we get to the final pit stop at the end of the race that is when the success penalties are served so the drivers the teams that were on the podium last time out at brown's hatch first second and third overall in gt3 gt4 they have some extra time to serve and of course the car that's second in the race right now that black number 78 lamborghini won a branch hatch last time so they will have 20 seconds to serve in the pit lane there is angus fender still fourth jordan with his teammates in uh position they struggled a bit here in the wet didn't there a lot of teams struggled here in the wet actually in august teams that we expected to be a little bit quicker but generally they were the teams with the least experience of either their cars or this championship in general they were the ones that struggled in the win i think everyone when they woke up this morning and they looked at the by the forecast and they saw it could be trying so they probably breathed quite a sigh of relief yeah i think it's the mclaren mclaren all the teams in the mclaren with the exception of battle who had stewart in the car no disrespect all of the other teams were brand new to the car covert has meant there's been very little time to practice and the weather has been fantastic and so we had a wet race and all of a sudden they didn't know what they were doing here we have now an episode where we're looking at santa hat i talked about coming back from making a mistake sander hat is on a mission isn't he look at sam's pace he's lapping in the 28th sevens i think he'll be all over well i think he'll be past richard williams very soon it'd be interesting to see how hard richard fights it sam's faster simon's lapping at a pace similar if not quicker than phil king yeah the only person faster than sam to have on the previous lap with james baldwin the race leader phil keane in a bit of traffic of course yeah a bit further down the order but uh is flying but then the car qualifies second on the grid we did say this is a good uh mercedes circuit it's a circuit that suits the front engine cars it seems those long sweeping corners really uh play into their hands and as he catches richard williams he's kind of spurring the audi on and they're both reeling in the uh number 10 in front so it's not beyond the real possibility here that within the next 10 minutes or so sam's ham could be back in the top five and that all things considered would not be a bad way to round out the first third of the race into the final corner the audi takes a wide line and again the front end mercedes it grips better through the middle of the corner takes a tighter line but then off the corner the audi carries more momentum down the straights three different cars they've all designed differently they're all set up differently they're all gonna have different strengths and weaknesses and this is one of those really fascinating british gt battles where each car is going to have a certain strength a certain weakness we don't really know how it's going to play out in a three-way battle yeah the front of the mercedes is very good it's a front engine car the other two cars are mid-engine and you can see that the front end on the sound car very good by which i mean when he turns it's a media so you're probably having more trouble to get the power down than the other guys whereas what we see with the audi it's all about as you say carrying corner speed they're unquestionably catching wit i've been watching wit's lap times and i think he's probably spending a little bit too much time looking in his rear view mirror because we know from fender that the car is quicker than that and whit last time was down in the one minute 30 somethings in fact he was one of the slowest gt3 cars on the last lap without traffic so clearly he needs to start putting his focus forward sam is going to do a recovery driver his life here yeah this is exactly what he needed to do and he'll be fired up after the spin that he had at the very first quarter they had a golden opportunity here to take advantage of a good position no success penalty because they were fourth at brandt's hatch uh last time out joe osborne always tells me that if you just finish fourth in every race you'll probably win the championship because you never have success penalties you're still scoring good points that was a late lunge up the inside of the audi there into uh god odds but sam dehan not quite able to do it and now they are about to encounter traffic the number 33 bmw for david whitmore the all am entry for century motorsport and also the gt3 uh ultimate speed aston martin of michael brown is about to go a lap down and this again presents an opportunity for overtaking yeah did you see that early richard williams had to get on the brake pedal on the exit that's cost him deer i mean okay he's cleared it now but i think he really is focusing in the wrong area well out of the uh old hairpin goes this pair they're still uh racing hard but no way through for uh sam to ham that's in the number 69 car and uh the sister car of course has also been in strife in this racy and loggi having a spin in another six round racing mercedes in the old hairpin uh younger bourbon his co-driver is down in the pit lane with grim yes as you say ian having a bit of a moment the elmer you were looking on when ian had his moment there what are your thoughts when you're watching the screen because obviously the race plan goes out the window yeah i mean in the end it's a long race and it's very difficult to predict what happens with safety cars and so on so there is anything but a fixed strategy for sure you know you always want to stay in front could you work out what actually happened on that first turn could you see what happened do you know what the team was saying no i mean obviously there were some back markers two of them which you know they are fighting each other so a big chance it has something to do with that because you know when two black parkers are fighting then they don't mind the mirrors as much and i can imagine it had something to do with that because he has been very consistent also you know here but also in other races and normally he doesn't make mistakes on his own so it's a shame but the race is still long and we have some opportunities left know he's just overtaken the number 30 the audi so he's climbing back up the order which hopefully puts you in the strong position when you get your turn your first turn exactly yeah hopefully uh i think actually it was the 69 and over to 30 because we're a bit too far behind ted unfortunately but uh ian so we're taking some other cars he's uh making up for the damage so uh let's try and make it a good episode yeah great stuff thank you very much there you go thanks back to you too yeah two racing cars this year of course that's uh a double bear workflow but also double their information that they're able to gather over a weekend but it is indeed the 69 card that we just saw uh gaining a position getting ahead of richard williams in the audi that is now sixth place for sam dahan in lockheed whose teammate yama bourbon we just spoke to down in ninth position at the moment but as you can see actually the second of the pro-am cars at the moment uh in the race with only richard neary in the team aberration mercedes in front and richard neary is less than 10 seconds ahead of me so again all is not necessarily lost the the move that sam duhan just made uh we saw it begin at goddard really he'd been having a little nibble at the inside line for the last few laps he finally got that uh substantial nose of the mercedes in the gap and then by the time he got to regulate corner i think richard realized he was beaten yeah richard is a is an old pro sorry for description but he is he he knows what he's got to do he knows it's all about not losing time so you saw he didn't fight it hard at all but sam look at him he's on an absolute mission you see him working at the wheel there he's gonna i think he'll catch wind and be past him in no time that'd be up to fifth place yeah that is impressive after falling right to the back of the the gt3 category right at the front of the gt3 category though is the number two mclaren and uh this is uh james baldwin then leading the way 14 and a half seconds ahead of rob collard now don't forget this car finished second at brands hatch and uh will have uh to serve there for a 15 second success penalty uh and it's already nearly 15 seconds ahead of the rest of the field but that penalty will not be served till the final pit stop so uh long long way to go yet uh the gap by the way between baldwin leader and phil keane who is the first of the gt3 cars competitive down in tenth place is hovering at around about 65 seconds and a gt3 minimum pit stop is 110 seconds so yeah definitely phil keane looks as though he is going to come out with the race lead once the pit stops are done bob collard though well will he be ahead of the optima motorsport car by the time we get to the first round of pitstop certainly lewis proctor is hoping not he's really attacking rob collard and i noticed there's a bit of damage to the left rear corner of rob's car next time we see an external shock just a bit of the body work above the left rear wheel has been loosened and so i don't know whether maybe the mclaren has had a bit of a bite out of the left rear corner we should just see it as it turns into the uh we didn't quite but uh just a little bit of body work loose rob collard that won't bother him he's used to uh close and physical racing from his experience in touring cars and that i suppose is one of the things that you really can translate into gt basically it's completely different discipline but when it comes to wheel to wheel racing either attacking or defending rob carl argenman in the paddock we were all joking about rock when he joined sorry rob but we were because we all just assumed he'd just slam into everyone he has adapted so well he's got a really cool head on him actually and do you remember when it was sam told off came in and he had to go he went to bar one as well and actually he really struggled he found the concept difficult and he's gone back to touring cars over the years whereas here rob's rob's actually i think found his niche yeah one thing sam said that he didn't like was having to share a car with somebody else not when he's precious about it being his car but set up he was quite sensitive about setup and it was the problem was that if his co-driver wanted a slightly different setup he struggled to compromise whereas rob collard against such an experienced driving he's driven all sorts of cars and he knows how to drive around a car that isn't necessarily exactly to his life again that is quite a big part of gt racing anyway you have to share the car with another driver if you don't have exactly the same driving style and exactly the same tasting car setup that can be a challenge yeah it is it's how the garage fights break out it's always had about one person wants the car to be loose on the air the other guy wants the front to be uh to be a little bit less grip and a bit more forgiving uh andy i'm just watching something of interest i'm watching lewis and he keeps on pulling out even though he's nowhere near rob card he keeps pulling out his lip stream it's almost like he's got like he's trying to call the car i've watched it a couple of times now and he m he's moving over to the left or the right hand side to get out of the way but he's nowhere near close enough to have a look so it's like worth watching there he's he's doing that for a reason he's he's moving very deliberately yeah it can sometimes be to do with temperature it can sometimes just be you're trying to distract the car in front i mean he's too far back for that this is why i'm finally getting curious i've seen it twice now he might be getting cause on the radio just to just get a bit of clean air maybe well uh we will perhaps be able to find out when he gets out of the car if he is willing to tell us that is uh put the optimum car up from the team they know what they're doing they're a top team but they are again getting used to a new car this year but like we said about academy and gt4 going from aston martin to port mustang we'll opt for them we've gone from master martin to mclaren and uh it's just taking them a little bit longer i think to find the sweet spot with it two seas motorsport a brand new team all together and they chose mclaren as their car of choice they've got two of them they look fantastic and they are desperate to try and get a good result out of this weekend and uh this car on board with angus fender is running in fourth place 1.9 seconds behind those two that we were watching but matching them on lap time so he'll be sitting there spurring lewis prop the wrong won't he saying go on have a go at him make him defend attack attack because if they start racing each other it won't take long for that 1.9 seconds to disappear yeah absolutely i'd like to stay on billboard for a bit longer there right i thoroughly enjoy watching other people's driving styles and angus looks he was quite smooth there interesting to know how he's using first gear in both hairpins yeah i imagine viewers find that a bit strange in a road car you don't use first gear to pull away and don't go near it but these cars you need to get all of that torque and sometimes the torque is quite high up so you put it down the first gear to move on but look look at sanderhan's recovery you have to ask the question if he hadn't made that mistake on the first lap i i think you'd have been right with james baldwin i really do fantastic recovery drive but what could have been yeah his lap times are on a par with baldwin at the moment so yeah the 69 car is uh every bit as quick as the race leader and again long range 2 hours and 20 minutes to go all it takes is another safety car and they're right back up there right now though his priority is getting past jordan witt in the number 10 mclaren and he's caught him pretty rapidly but again he's now got to try and figure out where the best place to attack is going to be this is another different car for him to go up against the mclaren and so it may be that he has to pick his moments a little bit differently goes through the melbourne hemp in the mclaren has such good torque out of the tight corners it really is a great all-around car good grip from the front through the high-speed corners great acceleration out of the tight corners as well because of that torquey engine and a bit of traffic up the road as well so sam is gonna be looking to try and apply the pressure here and i think he's quite close enough to radiate corner gonna flash the light to him just in case that distracts him again a little to the left that little flash of colour in the mirror can sometimes put the driver in front of but jordan white is a relatively experienced gt driver these days i don't think that's gonna work isn't it yeah let me tell you what really incites me when someone starts flashing their heads i don't think it's gonna it doesn't distract me it annoys me and so you know it really what you need to do is you need to focus on getting past people and i have to say that with using an awful lot to curve we're watching through the chicano on this lap as we get the chance to see it he took a tremendous amount of exit curb which actually can unsettle the car we can see that sam where sam quick is quicker he's quicker in turn one he's quicker throughout most of the circle where he's losing time he's actually in the two hairpins which surprises me because this car is normally very strong under brakes but clearly it's good in the high speed stuff this weekend and using those curves that adds wear and tear to the car and again over such a long race you've got to be mindful of that you have to pace yourself it's all well and good going hell for leather in the first hour and a half or so of the race but if you take too much out of the car you can really trouble later on the headlight flashing is getting uh uh more and more uh urgent now from the sound of the way he's going it won't he just yeah that uh that headlight flashing switch on the wheel is getting work over because he is now starting to go work over from richard williams behind that's what's uh making him a little more impatient to make this move stick second place rob collar comes through 16 seconds now behind james baldwin he's more or less patching the leader now as into the pit lane comes the speed works toyotas this is the first of our green flag pit stops is this a scheduled stop it may well be as i said they have to pick three times over the course of the race so 45 minutes would be the average length for the stint but just shy of that and this is james kell coming in uh to hand over them 23 car to sam smelt yeah look how relaxed they are i think people are so used to seeing formula one uh putting this we get time you've got minimum time to do a driver change and the calmer you are the better it is and so many times we've seen people fluff their bells and that can cost you a race win so lucky to see them being very calm there sam has dropped back a little bit in traffic hasn't he he's got to focus he's got to fight he's got the measure of what's in front of him and i think the car is clearly quicker in sectors one and two uh baldwin now coming up behind some traffic what's he got now that nearly 16 second lead and every lap he's in the 28s every lap handy yeah really consistent and consistently quick this is an important overtake he's about to make as well because that's the wpi motorsport car of uh mike liga that is already one lap down and it's about to go two laps down one of those laps was lost because of the spin uh the other lap lost because of delays associated with the spin but also this rocket ship pace from the jensen team rocket rjn mclaren out in front caught a glimpse there if your gt4 leader that is still matt cowley in the academy motorsport mustang the 58 mclaren there is second in the class and that is uh heading for the pit lane i thought it was as too is richard williams in the stellar motorsport a stellar performance audi the bentley is in as well for team parker racing so uh the mclaren is probably the most significant of these here patrick mattiason from second place in the class uh ready to hand over to jordan collar so pit lane i think is about to become quite a busy place yeah really well done by matthias now i don't know if he notices but he put his indicator on he signaled before the last corner to the gt3 car behind him that he was going in the pit clear communication is everything it didn't cost him any time i'm surprised to see these early pit stops but i think what it is is the the grid's a little bit the tracks a little bit spaced out at the moment if i were engineering these cars i think that at the moment commentators curse but at the moment i would say that a safety car is fairly unlikely so what they're trying to do is get their fastest driver in now not lose the time because these are early stops uh they are although as i said it's three mandatory stops so i suppose if you split it into quarters uh you get about i can't count but about 45 minutes or so so i guess we're just on the fringes of it and as you say a lot of these are am drivers coming in to hand over to pros rob collards still being attacked here by lewis proctor who is now fully alongside going up towards goddard's hairpin this is for second place overall mclaren on the outside can't go right around the outside can he get the cut back across the start finish line no rob collard hangs on again remember rob did that epic stint here in that first race a month ago where he did nearly 90 minutes in the car praying for the trap to dry out enough to change the slits it didn't quite work out uh this time around it may well be that he's forced to pit a bit earlier just to get out of this battle no i think rob has lost some time in traffic and given lewis an incentive that this is tough fighting you know this early in the race lewis is incentivized he is he he can smell that place as i say rob clearly lost time in traffic somewhere a lot of time lewis was nowhere near this close to two laps back no carl i've lost half a second to procter on the previous lap samsung is in so you were handed over to patrick cajala so never quite got himself into the top five before the pit stop but still a really really good recovery drive i'm hoping we'll be able to speak to sam once he's had a chance to have a drink of water and cool off after that very uh very eventful first 45 minutes of racing fight for second place though rage is on they've negotiated a little bit of traffic they're heading back towards the grand prix loop again and at one point may be consider pitting lewis procter here just to get him out of this uh this battle because it's clearly costing him time though yeah but you know what lewis doesn't want to hear he does want to hear pitt he wants to overtake he's going for the inside is he got room for how did he miss him look interesting to watch uh rob rob's driving the car far straighter so if you imagine that if you draw a compass lewis has the car far more of a circular uh wider arc into the corner whereas rob's squaring the corner off and getting it straight on the exits so yeah we're just seeing the two seas car of their of uh fender uh pit so i think we can probably assume that we'll see wittin very soon as well marco mapelli is back out now in the 18 lamborghini making his first appearance in the championship partnering michael i go in the number 18 lamborghini the factory driver is marco marpelli very quick racer he has raced here at branson i believe but quite a long time ago as uh it is a very expensive mclaren car park down in the pit lane the 57 hhc car is in the number nine two seas motorsport car is in tire changes every time as well here of course so they should always have relatively fresh rubber on although it won't necessarily be a sticker pair of eyes will it every time no you don't have enough tires over the course of the weekend to have new ones every time they'll be using their qualifying tires both drivers get a new set of quality tyres so they'll be using one each they'll be have kept if they've been intelligent that have kept a tyre over one more set they didn't use in testing you never know that's the beautiful thing about gt racing you don't know what the other guy's got you don't and so if they've kept a set of tyres a new set of tyres is worth one two seconds a lap yeah it really is pit lane goes james baldwin then so james baldwin the race leader is in and this is crucial because we need to watch for phil keane now don't we we reckon phil keane is going to come out with the race lead here once everybody has stopped so james baldwin will hand over to michael o'brien the minimum pit stop time remember should be longer than the gap was between the mclaren and the lamborghini that sat at well a little over a minute i think it was last time we checked rob collard for now takes over the race lead in the lamborghini and the optimum mclaren of lewis proctor goes second jordan wick goes third but angus fender is in the pit lane as we said so it's about a 50 50 split at the moment as far as those that are pitted and those that have not yeah i'm interested to watch gt4 but unfortunately we haven't got it on screen at the moment but carol is doing a fantastic job he really is he's dominating isn't he his pace is fantastic two seconds a lot quicker than anyone last time what's a success penalty 20 seconds at the pit stop in the third hour i wonder if they could back-to-back wins well we've seen michael o'brien sorry there to interrupt michael o'brien gets in the car now michael as i said was my teammate last year he's tiny absolutely no really he's about sorry michael he's only about five five and getting in and out of the car for him when i shed a car with him last year he had to have a seat insert that was enormous it's almost like we put a pram in for him well this is uh phil keane then down into the uh old head but this car remember has already stopped they pitted at the end of lap one a completely planned pit stop they hit it because the safety car was out they wanted to get their pro in now this looks as though it's gonna pay off because this car when it leaves the pit lane we think it's going to come out behind although there's still about half a lap before phil keane gets back to the start finish line i think and uh when he does uh i don't know i think he's already gone through hasn't it yet he's already gone ahead of the number two mclaren now this looks like it was a no-brainer but at some point they will have to pay their dues won't they they're gonna have to stick baloney now for what would have been the rest of that stint so is it short-term gain for long term pain or do you think this is a race winning strategy it's hard to say but that was very harsh from adam there but i know that i know the point you're making you know who else knows the point you're making adam knows the quality of making and what's really unusual about these three-hour races is you can find yourself up against drivers you aren't normally against because the amps are out on track at the same time as a pro and as i said earlier people are on different tyres and so you really won't know how this thing is going to play out until later on it's almost impossible you imagine you're an engineer on the pitbull trying to sort this out i mean for example sam duhan his team were watching now they didn't factor in a spin up the first on the first call in the first lap they'll be trying to work out what to do they've got an early pit stop to patrick we know how quick he is i still think they're a factor oh yeah no absolutely i think so they've got the pace haven't they and as we made the point they don't have a success penalty uh when we get to that final pit stops there is rob collard then your race leader yet to pit and does not make friends with the apex there down at the melbourne hairbid and now they've got marco mapelli the pro driver back into the 18 wpr motorsport lamborghini he's quicker than these two and he wants to get one of his laps back and he sees this as an opportunity maybe to try and get back into the contention as well mia flew it is in to hand over the uh pro am half motorsport mclaren gt4 to you and hanky i noticed that balf have kept both of their gt4 cars out a little bit longer than maybe i expected with uh young klingelberg staying out in the 2002 example as well before hanging over to warren hughes and yeah now lewis proctor is starting to become a bit distracted i think by what mark and rapalje do behind him marco is a pro driver he's on fresh tyres yeah he's fresh in the car as well he's gonna be quicker than lewis is it even worth lewis defending for a car that's laps behind us let him go let it go you were all over the back of the race leader and now you're worrying about lose position it's all again about making sure that you focus on the overall distance not on the now not in the moment this is not a sprint race i don't know if you've spotted this have you seen the lead that keem has over michael o'brien they've both stopped once currently if i'm wrong but is that a 20-second lead it is which is about what we thought it would be isn't it so uh tom hornsby who fed us that his face no more stress got the calculations absolutely right so phil key wants everybody else picked should have the race lead but that is as we've said because they've had the pro driver in for not even a little bit longer significantly longer than a lot of the other pro cars out there so we'll see how this plays out but pele still hasn't been able to unlock himself as there you can see the uh contact oh dear emma pelly into the back of proctor this is what you were saying this is not a fight that either of these drivers need to be having but mapeli has nothing to lose he's laps behind and his only way of getting this car back into contention is to be aggressive and aggressive he is as he dives around the outside of leo that was a hell of a move but that was a risk that lewis did not need to be taking yeah i mean look the team's job in that case just get on the radio and tell him not to fight it's not a race that he's in they're miles ahead of them two laps as you say andy that that was leedless and again it cost time look how far behind lewis is now from rob uh yeah the gap was 1.2 seconds at the start it will be significantly more now but now they're both getting backed up behind one of the tf sports aston martins 97 that is i think uh which is being driven by jamie caroline having made its first pit stop dan vaughn has handed over uh to the 97 car that is second in the gt4 championship but only half a point behind the spouse and chris westfale's 57 hhc mclaren which they are ahead of by quite a bit at the moment so as they stand in gt4 it looks like aston martin and tf sport are going to uh take themselves back to the top of the points table now rob collard has the wpi motorsport car bearing down on it same story for rob really no need to make this any harder than it needs to be yeah quiet i mean you can see right now on screen in front of you what happens if you get in a fight that you don't need to get into lewis was lucky not to get taken out there i don't i don't think that the lamborghini did anything wrong there he put it in there and it probably rightly expected the other guy to get out of the way where has rob collard gone is he pitted or i think he's just to our right we're on war with marco mapelli now and rob collard that's how you do it years of wisdom and experience he knows when to pick a fight and he knows when to step away paul to the right-hand side wave marco mapelli through minimal timeliness what do you think we lost there maybe a couple of attempts yeah that's exactly how you do i said earlier it's incredible how well roberts has gone into this series a sprint race for his whole life and now he's done this and look he's still quick he's still quick he's his tyres aren't as good as they were before yeah this number 18 car is quick rob collard is equally as quick at the moment he's but marco papelli is gaining overtaking lots of cars gaining track position but uh sadly he still finds himself uh 15th overall and uh well three laps down on the race leaders now too because he's just unlocked himself from rob color but that could all prove to be crucial if they can catch some safety cars at the right time if they can use the strategy to put themselves back in contention this is why the teams love this more open strategy that we have in the three-hour races if this was a traditional two-hour race with a you know you pits bang on halfway through you give each other 50 percent of the race there's no real way back from this but here they have some strategic freedom they do have to stream but honestly it's there isn't a calculator in the world that can work this out you need a crystal ball to work it out and if we get a safety car right now everyone that's already stopped will be absolutely kicking themselves and we could see the likes of keane who's currently got an enormous lead well actually a safety car is kind of what they want right now isn't it but if we take for example michael o'brien a safety car would just destroy their race and you all you can do is look at the tracks see how many cars are close to each other and you are almost trying to predict the future yeah exactly they are uh praying all the teams out there either for a safety car or not to have a safety car we saw the uh academy mustang by the way matt cowley giving up the gt4 uh race lead to yang klingelberg who will take over now in his first race in the championship and that car that he will hand over to former btcc race winner and former gt4 champion warren hughes uh at the first pit stop that car now takes over the class lead as a result of some others uh taking uh pit stops and don't forget that that being a pro-am car the same as the other valve card may have filtered you and hanky they don't have to serve a silver cup penalty in each pit stop every time a gt4 silver car which is anyone other than those two mclarens and the 33 bmw every time one of those car pits they have to spend an extra 14 seconds in that's an every stop not just the final one yeah sorry there and it's been dropping michael just clipped the tire baron he's taken something off the front of the car i couldn't help but notice i was watching him as you were talking and he's losing time to macdonald in the two seas car behind him already i'd love to see the front of uh of that car right now he just took a big chunk of carbon fiber off it uh was it carbon fiber could it there's a wrap around that little tire stack that sometimes comes loose it could have been either it could be both i suppose i've never heard it i'm very careful of course of course it goes without saying graham let's see if we can uh get a good look at the front of that car there you can see a little bit of damage on the rear left of the column of lamborghini that's not going to be enough to affect it i'm sure not at all he won't even be aware of it i'll tell you who is aware of it michael knows he hit that tire barry he does a hundred percent he'd have felt that he could have knocked the steering wheel he'd be interested to see on board to see if his steering wheel is still straight if it isn't they've got to carry that with them for the next two hours but no a bit of a rare mistake there from michael but i can't see any damage actually i think you're right it probably was actually something off the tire barrier that the winglets are still on the car but even so mcdonald behind him is charging he was eight tenths of a second faster yeah that gap is going to keep on coming down i think isn't it at the moment as well 18.9 seconds at the moment here's the replay oh it's already loose and he just uh just collects it so it's in the middle of the road won't do any damage but uh that will have caught his attention yeah for sure honestly whenever there's debris in the road that you don't expect remember you sit very low in these cars you can't see the body you can't see anything he would have heard an enormous whack got straighter on the radio and said what on earth was that and he'll be feeling things he's not he'll be hearing things and pinning things and tell someone hopefully reassures him it was just a bit of a tire barrier yeah and that's an important job actually if you're on the radio to the driver this is sometimes where the other driver will be constant radio uh communication with the the driver in the car and that's they always have to be a cheerleader don't they see the driver that's out on track and just keep managing their state of mind throughout the uh throughout the stint so um track limits for car 2. michael o'brien is losing time and exceeding track limits whilst doing it that's not really a great combination is it that car there being warmed for track live it's not a penalty yet but that will keep on adding up throughout the rest of this stint now the number two car has come out to the pit lane in seventh place uh overall it is the second place car that has stopped and uh yeah it is a long long way behind uh phil keane in the lamborghini it's gonna be a huge margin that the uh number 72 car has once the pit stops have been completed yeah so once they're completed we've got phil king in the lead but he must surely be stopping very soon the fuel tank can't last forever he must be due to stop in the next 10 minutes or so the car barely did a lap and so he's gonna fall right down the order this is what we were saying about stick with this race there's so much action to come they need to minimize how long ballon is in the car but but adam's got to do one hour and 20 minutes will the fuel tank last one hour 20 minutes well yeah that is going to be uh an interesting question over the next hour or so that we'll follow uh meanwhile samsung how is behind dean mcdonald so both of these two have pitted this is the battle that was going on with their co-drivers uh before they say the pit stop started anger spender was in the line car santa han was in the 69 the two cars are still locked in combat still fighting for position but with different drivers now behind the wheel and therefore another different dynamic uh between these two um cars as they head towards the uh final corner just behind the by the way you can see the 95 tf sport aston martin remember both of those cars are pitted early and it looks as though that's going to work out for them they are going to come out with the lead and second place in gt4 they're on the the philippine balboa motorsport strategy art they so they're essentially a pit stop ahead of everybody but that means that they will have to bring those cars in fairly shortly that is the 95 car that leads the class with patrick kibble uh jamie caroline is 9.9 seconds behind his teammate good news as far as tom ferry is concerned there's nearly 10 seconds of clean air between these two what do you mean well you see if you cast your mind back to brown's hatch last time out they got a bit closer than nine seconds didn't they they were racing proposing places those two cars in the final few laps contact was made kibble ended up in the gravel trap jd caroline ended up having to defend himself in the uh post race interviews and uh i'm sure all joking aside that tom ferrier will be quite grateful that they're not wheels wheel right now yeah it's unusual what you want to do you want your car to come first and you want me to cover second uh but you're absolutely right i spoke to tom and uh i gave her it was a little frosty in the truck i don't think there's a great deal of love there and hopefully they can patch it up because what matters is the team and what matters is winning but for the team for yourselves for your co-driver i think jamie's done a terrific job this year when we were here a month ago he tore off into the distance i don't think he's had the luck that he deserves an okay yes there was a mistake made there was a hot-headed mistake made against his teammate in the last race but oh look what i'm doing to the poor guy i thought i thought he'd uh i thought he'd hit too much curb there and i've given the commentators curse he's launched the car off the curb those curbs those curbs earlier we were watching a genetta race and it took the bonnet off so if we watch the replay and see what happens look how much kirby takes car pings off it see the front car bouncing bouncing and that's chucked the car off i don't think you'd have lost that much time there he would have probably lost a little bit of one of his lives but uh yeah it just shows you he knows the other guy's ahead of him and he wants to catch him there he's needle uh he lost about two seconds that time nearly to patrick kibble so whether that was all from that though but of course he have dirt on the tyres now as well they're hot and sticky at this stage deep into the stint um you will learn the more commentary you do grow never say anything nice about any driver because instantly something will go wrong uh this car though i'm going to say something nice about this car because they're doing well academy goes to sport they're the highest placed car uh well not that the highest place car that has pity but once the tf aston's pit they will reinherit the race lead and therefore the uh mclaren not far behind them will be once again in competition with them for the class lead that is the number 58 car now with jordan carlos we have both the collars out on track together at the moment the academy mustang is quicker at the moment than the aston martins pressure tyres well i said would you like just watch jamie's drive across the grass and do a bit of and destroy uh jonathan farmer's life but he he um but no i mean that that is that is a loss to us oh stop and go penalty for number six who've we got there andy that's uh berman they are having an absolutely dreadful day you had the communicators cars there you said they were going to win why did i say that about round racing they will i will not be welcome at their garage after the race will like uh so the number six car that is currently running in 11th place too short a pit stop now what we haven't been told is how short it was the rule is if you are for example a second short a second underneath the minimum pit stop time they bring you in they stop you for a second and then you go but of course the time loss is a lot more than a second because you have to slow down to pit lane speed limit trudge all the way down to the penalty box stop stop get back out again so the total time loss is closer to 20 seconds or so it will now will this put them a lap down it might do because rob collard and lewis proctor still stubbornly have not went to the pit lane and we're now past the one-hour mark so they're going for a third strategy that we haven't even considered which is that you go way deep into the race uh before you make your your first um pit stop they have the luxury of doing that though because they are silver cup cars they have two reasonably equal drivers in both of those cars and that does afford you a bit more freedom yeah it does the silver silver cars are almost in a different race they are because the cars are lapping at the same pace then again as i've said before people like balan people like loggie can on their day have the same pace and look what it was an interesting race uh shaping up here here comes jordan albert jordan used to be a mclaren driver development uh program driver and behind him is uh is jordan card he's an old colleague as lewis proctor pits two seconds behind the race lead he was when he came in and this is uh again right on cue really because we were just saying that this was quite a long stint but yeah that will be interesting matt cowley will have uh even more incentive to keep that mclaren behind it once they do get themselves together phil keane goes through to officially move ahead of the optimal mclaren now where will this car come out in relation to michael o'brien i suspect it might be ahead of the number two car uh despite the fact that it was behind it when the pit stop sequence started uh number 33 is in that's david whitmore to hand over to lukowski and uh yellow bourbon sorry is it to serve the stop go penalty i'm being told by tom hornsby that it was less than a second underneath the minimum pit stop time that's here whoa that was that's breaking down surely yeah there's a problem there is the number nine car so that is uh it hasn't made the pit lane yet though interestingly so number nine is dean mcdonald lost two places on the previous lap one of which we saw was to patrick ayala the other one to senate fielding it's almost like he lost a gear or something which is very unusual in these cars he's a paddle ship um but look we've seen the optimum pit stop very leisurely but they have the time and you need to be leisurely have we got we've got wilkinson taken over here um he qualified a second faster as i said earlier than procter um he's very very talented driver and again they're both fighting for a for a factory drive who's this we've got in here this collar i think it is yes it is the 78 is in so this will complete the first round of pit stops and as he pulls in the optimum car goes out and i'm guessing that phil keane and michael o'brien have both gone through yes they have so the optimal car is going to come out in third position i believe as uh joe osborne goes through he's uh snuck into the number 36 mclaren and yeah optimal come out just in front of patrick yalas this is going to be for about third fourth and fifth places once you throw the 78 car back into the hunt so uh 96 now being driven then in the second stint of the race uh by ollie wilkinson 69 is patrick kayala you've got center fielding in the audi behind and having a really good run as well flying under the radar of bit but that audi looks quick and in another lapse time this car will also be in that battle and then we'll have a true picture of what the order is going to look like behind bill keem and michael o'brien yeah let's try and unravel it so we know the king's got to stop very soon yeah so we must therefore be saying that the leader in a few minutes is going to be michael o'brien then we're going to be saying that the second place car is probably wilkinson yeah because we've got no we haven't got a pit stop penalty yes yes it will be mitchell that comes at the last pit stop so yeah it will be one of those two and we'll find out in about half a lap before we do so though let's head down to two seas motorsport brin has some news from uh the two seas pit yeah i certainly do a car that had real problems yesterday and fb1 fp2 was quality as well but i've got jordan here that was a pretty good first stint but particularly on the first corner it was good you know i think i just wanted to hit the jump on everybody i had the turbos pretty spooled and then there was two big gaps to go through so it's jumped into the middle and then yeah we just seemed to cement in that place for the stint we did what we wanted to do we uh brought it along and yeah yeah yeah now the problems yesterday any sign of it reoccurring or is it running smoothly no i think yesterday probably just one of those things that happened to motorsport there's nothing we could do so you know we uh fix everything but today yes it seems to be perfect and so what's jack's ambition what's he going to try and do out on track presumably gain some places ready for you but yeah you know jack's fast son yeah i think he'll be out there working as hard as i did uh but both together are pretty fast as a team so yeah i think we'll do pretty well yeah do you know when you're going back in what's your break now uh we're not too sure really honestly i think i just uh floated around the garage waiting good stuff we'll enjoy it right thank you very much there jordan uh right then rob uh sandy mitchell is back out in the 78 lamborghini and he has got out in front of the optimum mclaren so the order now then at the end of this lap phil keane will lead the way from michael o'brien in second position i'll give you the gap when o'brien completes this his 44 flat of the race we are into the second hour of the race as well so before phil keane comes in and starts the second round of pit stops again i will give you the full order if i can uh but then this will become the fight for third between sandy mitchell uh ollie wilkinson patrick kiyala and sennan fielding and not that far back as jack mitchell in the first of the two seas mclaren phil keane is a minute a minute ahead of michael o'brien now the minimum the the he will lose that lead but not by a huge amount phil keane is really bringing that 72 card right back into play here but of course in the next step we anticipate it might start to lose a little bit of time he's a second quicker than michael o'brien last time around so the lead gap is a minute o'brien is 18 and a half seconds ahead of sandy mitchell in third uh he is 1.4 seconds ahead of uh patrick yard you can see the battle on screen there third and fourth places and kyola is two and a half seconds ahead of seven fielding in the audi he sits in sixth position at the moment third and fourth excuse me in front of us then we've got jack mitchell in seventh place eighth between mcdonald knight sam neary 10th yelmer bourbon and eleventh scott bolton but only actually the top eight cars are on the lead lap at the moment because uh several other others of course have run into difficulties also the fact that phil keane is a minute up the road for anyone else means that he's put quite a lot of cars one lap down they will be desperately waiting to see that green and black lamborghini headed to the pit because then they can get themselves at least temporarily back on the lead lap if gt4 patrick kibble leads the way for tf sport in the 95 aston martin jb caroline is about to come across the start finish line now and he is uh now over 10 seconds behind in second place jordan albert is five seconds behind him in third and fourth position in gt for jordan carla fitzsam spelt in soda and sick the championship leader chris westmale in the hhc mclaren so phil keem leading the way when does he pit that's the next question well look at his pace he doesn't need to pick he's he's lapping 28 too he was 1.4 seconds faster than the second place driver michael o'brien on that basis that gives adam balon his teammate a much easier ride he's going for another lap they've obviously got an enormous fuel tank they must have reserved tanks and that means that adam if he can laugh within 1.4 seconds of his teammate which is possible why not adam's tanty guy all of a sudden the pressure's less on him phil's making this job a lot easier for him he is there are two things that will force that car into the fitment one is fuel as you're saying eventually it is going to run out uh the other is this minute this um maximum uh driver time yeah okay no driver to do more than 100 minutes and you have to do it over two stints you can't do it all in one yeah so he's already on 65 minutes or so now at least so he his second step will be a lot shorter but it does have to be a second stick he can't just do the 400 minutes in one go even if the fuel tank would allow so phil will have to pitch shortly but uh when we will find out when it happens i suppose michael o'brien here in second position 18 seconds ahead of sandy mitchell now in third place and sandy mitchell is a further 1.6 seconds ahead of wilkinson and kayala there you could see that now wilkinson and kajal are catching him no not on the previous night mitchell was getting away so the lamborghini having got out in front of them that was crucial because it's got the pace to gap them if it had come back out behind the mclaren that completely messes up this next step for sanding absolutely but i tell you what i'm watching i'm watching michael o'brien's lap pace he's not happy in that car he's not laughing that fast against the other mclaren so let's look at the other mclaren post well jack mitchell's lapping in either the high 28s or low 29s whereas michael's in the high 29s of the 30s there's something in that car that isn't really to michael satisfaction i know him and i'm wondering if maybe there was a little bit of something that came from hitting that tire barrier or not the tire barrier hitting the side where something's thrown out of line or something michael's quicker than this there's a story behind this but perhaps perhaps uh we could find out in the pit lane yeah well i'd like to hear from james baldwin anyway so maybe we can uh send a bryn on his way barbell meanwhile are preparing for a pit stop so this tells me that phil key may be in and look tf have just been in and we know they're on the same strategy so that was the 97 car jb caroline is going to hand back over to dan vaughn and if that just has so uh this car i think maybe in on this next lap this will hand the lead back over to michael o'brien but yeah you're right he's being caught by sandy mitchell as well but you're a second and over a second and a half quicker than him at the moment so it may be that there is a slight problem for the number two car michael o'brien no problems at all for this car though 12 months ago this was the uh the date and the venue that uh the championship rather slipped away from far well as so often it has atomic to park sadly their doddington curse has struck year on year on year and uh it was contact with uh about mark wasn't it here 12 months ago that took this particular car out of contention phil keen on that occasion then he got a lap or so in in his stint before the rear suspension broke after earlier contact he's in the pit lane now though he's done significantly more time in the car this time around he brings the car in over a minute clear off my flow's ride in second place they will lose the lead here but this is their second pit stop of the day they have to make at least three they have to make at least three driver changes as well so this next in for adam balon will be maybe the stint that wins or loses the race for them it will all depend now on how much time ballon loses compared to the other cars out there around him his saving grace actually is that the next seven cars are all silver cars not pro-am cars so the next actual pro driver that's going to take a big chunk of time out of him is sam neary all the way down in ninth place nearly a lap back so he would rather be out there in competition with the silvers i'd imagine that the outright pros in the pro-am cast yeah you're right and actually sam's good but he's learning he's out there doing the dream he's racing with his dad and and i think adam will probably have the measure of him that stint from phil king was extraordinary he's he's on operation on a different level since he got out qualified by that young whipper snapper in the same car in barbara by sandy mitchell at brands hatch when he got out qualified by him phil keane is a factory driver yeah and so that stink was extraordinary so far phil king's best lap is one second faster than sandy mitchell's best lap in the same car with the same fuel load and the same tyres a point that i'm sure he'll be keen to mention when he gets back into the carriage after this stitch so back into the lead then goes the number two jensen team rocket rjn car michael o'brien takes over first position now as a result of this second pit stop for the 72 car sandy mitchell goes second only wilkinson goes third patrick cajala goes fourth and all of a sudden we go from having the top two cars separated by a minute to having the top two cars separated by less than 15 seconds and the next four cars separated by about five seconds it's very very close now at the front of the field he gets out of the pit lane then uh does uh adam balon and he is going to have dropped i think down to eighth position potentially it will all uh update itself at the end of the next lap this now then becomes the fight for third place patrick ajala still hasn't got past ollie wilkinson now they're silver drivers both of these but i would argue that patrick kajaler you would imagine it would be a little bit quicker certainly one of the quicker silver drivers in the championship just can't break past that mclaren yeah well there's another driver that's operating on a different level this weekend and that that is ollie wilkinson and i i know he gave himself a really hard time after brown satch they weren't what they wanted to be in he's doing a super herb job here he lost his head a little bit at the first round in autumn park and here he is against someone of the caliber of patrick in a factory car um and yet he's actually holding his own his lap speed very very good what is he he's only two three times a lap slower if he looks forward all the time i think he'll put a hole in behind him without losing too much time uh yeah well let's see then across the line they go kajal up into fourth place as we said allen i think we'll drop down to eight there i think he came out behind dean mcdonald uh after his pit stop wait for the uh timing screen to update itself yes dean mcdonald comes through seventh balance should be next in eighth position and this scrap then for third place between the mclaren remote sport and mercedes from ram racing continues hard to leave but this number 69 car was pointing the wrong way an hour and a quarter ago coming out to the first corner and uh santa hanna patrick have done a good job to wrestling back up the order the safety car helped them though obviously massively to uh to make sure that it uh it kind of regained a lot of the time that it lost from that uh spin that it had so sandy mitchell then in the uh black uh number 78 lamborghini uh who is running in the second position now this car was one of the last cars to pick to make its first stop rob collard a bit like he did here a month ago just didn't want to get out of the car at the end of his stint and he is down there now with bringing the pits i'm not sure about that i think he's very warm rob that was a really long first stint yeah absolutely um we got going and i thought this must be coming up to an hour now and then they said another 20 laps and then you'll be petting and um oh my god i've got to do a bit more work in the gym possibly over the next couple of weeks because these long endurance things definitely take it out again well it's very tricky the three-hour race before you collect a bit of the uh the wrap that goes around the tires there what was that like from your point of view yeah they said it was debris in the chicane and as i came in there's nothing i could do i think i avoided some of it but that's always the big big sort of connected the side of the car i could feed it or like hitting the car but yeah we were wondering from your point of view in the car do you have to rely on the team to tell you there's no damage to the car does it play on your mind no i've driven cars long enough you could normally tell you've got a feeling you feel the vibrations through the steering wheel through the through the through the seat so there's nothing sort of uh there's nothing enough to do any damage to the car we just carried on doing the same that time so i just sort of tried to stay in a room [Music] he's very good on in the last section into the hairpin on the brakes so to make sure that i knew where he was strong and where i was strong and um just protect them protect the gap where cut the times you had to look down the outside into the chicane but um there was nowhere around the outside with me no absolutely and also right for you a long time in the car go sit down have a nice restaurant thank you thank you so much cheers thank you bring them on my way rob if you uh if you find one uh yes uh the so we didn't actually see rob hit that rap at the chicane but obviously it was sat in the middle of the road and then all of a sudden it wasn't so i imagine maybe rob carlos did the marshall's job for them and cleared it out of the way but no damage done that car is on a mission it just it is quicker than the race need a lap or laugh as soon as i say that it was slower than michael o'brien but that is the first lap the stint that sandy mitchell has lost tides by globe ryan and the lead gap is now down to just 13 and a half seconds you know i have to start i've got a new power in this commentary stuff i need to talk about people that have annoyed me in the past and i can get them to have a disaster look this battle continues to rage i think that wilkinson is doing a superb job of staying ahead there and he turned it in really early then the car's behaving well yeah now on the left-hand side of the screen you can see patrick kibble's name in red that's because he is in the pit lane so it's a handy way of us knowing who is pitting when and patrick is in because he's on this alternate strategy that his teammate was in uh was on as well although they brought this car in a few laps later than the 97 which is interesting so with anyone with a pit lane at the same time and they're doing everything they can to keep them apart but that graphic will go back to a black background again once he is pitted you can see him dropping down the order now his teammate dan vaughan uh is about seventh place i think in gt4 so this car should fall back somewhere around there uh i forget now when the 95 was ahead of 97 i think it was wasn't it and it will continue to be because as you can see you can't see the 97 car yet on the start finish trade what you can see though is the race leading car by chloe bryan the genting rocket rjn squad are looking good here for well maybe their second victory of the year they took that win at alton park at the start of the season and are very much in championship attention there are 68 points which means they are 22 and a half points behind the championship leading 78 car thinking championship and we have to now there are only four races to go in the championship pits so we're into the second half of the season now they will be happy that they're leading they'll be less happy that the 78 car is having a really good day as well because 78 can hang on to second place that seriously minimizes the damage done and although the number two car is third in the points 22 and a half points is a decent cushion isn't it it is a decent cushion but you must to win a championship you can be obsessed with it well you have to focus on race result and i think sometimes you can be too hungry and i speak of experience now i've i've thrown away many a race win and other success but by wanting it too much the first thing you need to do is enjoy racing and i know that michael if you look at his lap time all of a sudden he's got his pace up michael's now focused so whatever was niggling him before michael's pace is on a par if not quicker than any of the other mclarens on track right now and it's all about this mind game stuff staying strong making sure you focus don't worry about the championship worry about the race win and what happened to them last time a land rover cost them a win do you want to explain that uh i'd rather not go into too much detail but there was a slight issue in the pit lane at bran's hatch last time which did wrong and delay them uh coming out of the pit lane they pitted in the race lead and they came out in second annoyingly behind the 78 lamborghini that went on of course to take the win and take the championship lead so uh yeah sometimes you really can't predict the hurdles you may have to jump in racy ah now that is kajala in presumably to hand back over to sam to hand wait for the timing screen in our booth to confirm that when he goes past the pit exit the transponder should change if it doesn't then that was a problem if it does it might still have been a problem because we didn't expect them in yet i think they're trying to get sam in to get his minimum drive out of the way in theory he'll have to stop in about what is that 20 minutes and he'll be done won't he which means that is it about that 20 minutes half hour he'll have done his minimum distance yes except sam isn't in the car because y'all have stayed in the car because he's totally tired of the screen and our timing screen is saying it's still patrick so i'm afraid that's completely thrown me there must have been a problem of some sort but the car was on rails it was one of the fastest cars on the track there was no obvious problem it wasn't a penalty either because he started in his pit box not the penalty box yep answers on a postcard everyone i have absolutely no idea what i'm racing uh i've brought that car in for i'm sure brilliant already sprinting his way down to that end of the pit lane to find out for us it could be that they haven't flipped the transponder over i'm trying to peer into the the cockpit but i have to have memorized everybody's helmet colours uh so far this year so i don't i if it is patrick ajala that is strange because you have to make three minimum minimum of three pit stops but that's the same number of driver changes you make there is no sense at all in pitting without changing the drive for sure i i think that's sam's lid have we got stopping here uh this is sandy isn't it as well so this is a short middle stint but they're yeah this is sandy getting out of the car very a very short amount of time so okay so we thought we'd see some weird and wacky strategies but this this is not we thought this was the period of race where you know things might settle out they would do a full stint uh but no they are getting sandy mitchell back out of the car and rob collard back in so rob hasn't had his cup of tea or if he has he's downed it very quickly uh and he's had to get straight back behind the wheel the 78 car this is a completely uh normal pit stop there's no problem there's no damage driver change tire change refuel and send him back on his way i did not see this coming round no poker face from uh from rob as well he just got interviewed a moment ago so he's gonna sit and have a relax now he's back in the car i'm surprised he got his helmet on on time i think we're obviously seeing people but this is all about minimum driver time they're trying to get rob's minimum driver time out the way so they can get sandy back in i i that must be what's happening with sam dahan i wonder if they just haven't flicked over the the ideas you say uh yeah yes it's changed so it is time to hand in the car so thank you uh for getting that supported then on track meanwhile this is jordan albert who is closing in on maura hughes and warren hughes is sadly not raising the mustang for position he has a lap behind the number 61 car which has now uh retaken the class lead of course because the aston martins have made their second pit stop this car uh still owes us that pit stop michael o'brien is back in as well so yeah this is absolutely um what they're trying to do is uh play the strategy game here get james baldwin back in james has been quicker than michael so far in this race it makes sense getting back in they were hemorrhage in time to the cars behind and so james baldwin is back in the car he's had about half an hour or so to rest up because this car was in uh quite early uh in the uh first proper cycle of pit stops brand new tires going on there i'd say what we saw i tell you why michael wasn't quick they left him on the old tyres i think that's what's going on right that's interesting so 72 go back through then so adam ballon now goes back ahead of the density rocket rjn car and uh it's gonna be a job now to keep track of all of these different strategies but i love it this is proper gt racing proper endurance racing teams not restricted by pit stop windows they are able to think outside the box and uh so michael o'brien he's no longer in that car it will be james baldwin who has jumped in now and this is their second pit stop done so i'm asking you this fully aware that you probably don't know but and now if you're bringing if you're making this early pit stop now how long do you leave this driving you've got to leave them right to the end of the this will be the driver that does 100 minutes shortly now this is the driver so so baldwin had done 60 minutes and so he's allowed to do another 40 minutes yes michael o'brien did what 10 15 minutes something like that i still can't quite i should have studied harder at school i can't understand to save my life the only thing that does all of a sudden make sense is i'm absolutely certain that michael was left on an old tire right because that that kid's quick yeah i couldn't understand his place so bentley is in we believe it came into the pit lane quite slowly yeah they've put on the dollies haven't they so that's going into the garage this is a shame the car that won here in august is not going to do so again today they've been a little off the pace in fairness scott baldwin was in the car and was slowly sort of regaining some ground but uh that is one of the worst sights in boat racing isn't it seeing a car being wheeled back into the garage midway through a race uh with some sort of a problem so uh well bryn's gonna be a busy boy isn't because we've got that to chase up we want to try and get to the bottom of the strategy game that's going on this is for position now though this is rob collard versus sandahan two silver graded drivers remember uh the mercedes has gained here it was a lot further behind that lamborghini before the pit stops this second round of pit stop started yeah it was but you know what i'm focusing on the timing screen adam balon he's lapping quickly 30.4 with the pace of keem it might be enough if he can keep it in the high 29s and low 30s they will be right up there so while this battle is going on adam ballen is secretly like a ninja coming through and actually is probably the best place to win this race yeah balon is in sixth position but having made two pit stops they are still the highest place guard that has made that second stop and yelmer and i believe has also just got back into the oh no sorry that's their second pit stop was a penalty wasn't it 61 are in from the lead of gt4 this is also kind of realigning all these strategies because it wasn't that long ago the tf sport cars were in and now only ten minutes later the uh the fort mustang is in as well so to the championship leading 57 car for hhc motorsport chris wessmail has brought the car in he will head back over to his teammate gus bowers and uh because of course started the race for hhc sorry they had no choice but to stop jordan now but in the mustang because he was getting held up by warren hughes it wasn't for position but they were in a fight i see a little bit of debris coming off the car there but if they were in a fight and he was losing a heap of time i think that stops being forced by the fact that he was stuck behind someone car 1826 under investigation so sam neary and matt anderson that is in the ultimate speed aston so we haven't seen that uh they are not fighting for position the breaker of sound near he's big at the moment matt madison all the way down in 14th and a couple of laps down so uh we'll again try to get some of the bottom of that one as well there is that man sustained well out of the way in the uh brand new aston martin very much a glorified test session this for them really as they tried to get to grips with that car and there is adam balon then he's not leading the race yet but by the end of uh his stint i think he more than likely will be yeah car in front of him is the wpi car being driven still by marco marpelty who is on a more traditional pitch strategy but i suppose they're just their only chance really getting back into this is to look into a a timely safety car report though for pele he's got himself back ahead of ballon now so even when balan takes over the lead he will be only one lap behind him rather than two yeah so we know that adam's got to get out the car about hour two hours and ten two hours and twenty minutes something like two hours and twenty minutes it must be by definition so he'll be in the car for another fifty minutes he's losing around only a second half a second a lap uh yes no you're right his lap times are good although that one was not so good he lost the place and that's often the difference between a pro driver and an am and it's not to do a talent it's to do that thing i always talk about seat time yeah the bottom line is he's not in traffic as much as as bill keane is he needs to practice more time on the m25 yes he was overtaken by albert berg which is what did bourbon the reason i was doing driven academy mustang right in front of him which is not jumping out of the way and north shore it's got its own race to run and you know the gt3 drivers always say the worst thing that a gt4 car could do when being flat is to start pulling aside the best thing for it to do is stay on the basic line at least then you know where it's going i've always put my indicator on always that way i get to decide who does what when i want them to do it it's genuinely i once made a mistake back in 2016 i i hit a gt3 car i was in a gt4 i didn't see it i didn't get notification on there and i had a big crash and you learn from that mistake you always learn from mistakes and i learned that you need to signal quite literally your intent to these drivers there's no point turning and hoping they don't come down you inside uh yeah exactly you've got to be clear what you're doing uh it's when you start weaving out of the way without indicating that that but then becomes unpredictable it sends a confusing message exactly yeah you've got to be clear and so many accidents being on a racetrack or on a public road are simply miscommunications people just not realizing what the other is doing so uh anyway into the pit lane you can see on the left hand side of the screen is jordan collard as well so he just brought the 58 hhc mclaren in there it is right on cue and that is a driver change uh going on when i see replay of an instance i believe uh out on track this might well be the uh ass this is bourbon going past balan and i like i said i was doing an arg about this yeah it was close we can't see if there was another carbon fiber flicked up remember i said about the carbon fiber that's yeah that's come off berman's car then that's interesting so there may well have been a bit of paint traded between the two of them but race control i believe are investigating that so we'll we'll see uh if anything comes of it and the order now then ollie wilkinson leads second is set and fielding the audi third is jack mitchell in the two seas mclaren that just went through and fourth is dean mcdonald in the second of the two seas cars fifth for sam samurai the team avocado those five cars uh 96 30 10 nine and eight it was a pit stop essentially they've made one pit stop where a lot of us have made two then it's adam allen who's the highest place car on two stops and he is in seventh place overall ahead of joe osborne who is in his first stint in the race this car that the number two car is running currently down in ninth place second highest place car that has made two stops so up to coppi's corner he goes and we're hearing that the reason race control wanted to see that replay with bourbon and uh balan moment is because they too have spotted that carbon fiber it was actually already on the track what i think it was it's one of those little um uh marker posts they put on pit lane exit that they were knocked into the air at the start of the race i think that was what maybe got thrown up by the uh cars or uh either bourbon or adam ballen tom hallsby says it's worth noting that uh philippe's fastest lap is three tenths under the existing lap record well set by nikki t so when you're going three tenths of a second quicker than nikki team you're doing something right yeah i tell you what that that that'll be noticed by uh by negative honestly genuinely it matters um these guys are trying to earn a living this is how they pay their mortgage being quicker you're only as good as your last race the pressure on these guys to perform and look let's be candid sorry phil but you're not getting any younger look wilson went wide there didn't he did you see the whole car bounce around on the exit there it flipped off the curb caught the grass but look i guess he's got he's got fielding in his mirrors doesn't he and buildings catching him yeah now this is i know that they're only fighting for the lead because of other people pitting but what a performance this is what a stellar performance has been from the audi team [Laughter] because this car is only in its second appearance ever in the championship it's new to the team they don't have that much mileage under their belt he is catching only wilkinson the audi could lead to this race and before too much longer yes the pit stops have helped but that won't matter to them will it i can't take you seriously after that instead of most sport of course which run the audi yeah i mean look fielding we know is quick uh one races in the audi gt4 car last year with the same driver with richard williams we they they weren't where they wanted to be a brand hatch in this car it was their first time out they didn't really get a full grip of the car but he is coming wilkinson fast wilkinson is leading is this the first time he's led a race i think it might be but you know when you're leading you want to hang on to that because it it gets the headlines the guys out behind us in the media room have noted it wow this is not paul's problem what is going on today so ollie wilkinson has just been given a drive-through penalty just as we were saying that he's doing a fantastic job leading the race so the audi is going to leave the race at least we've got that bit right but not necessarily in the way that uh center fielding would have liked so i have to say i haven't seen that on our timing stream but that i'm going to trust the graphic that just appeared uh on the screen and so the optimum car is gonna have to come into the pit lane and it was actually just starting to get back away from me as well so that would be most frustrating look i'd say what we'll do any one of the teams listening to us right now come and see us give us a bribe we'll say something good about uh arrival when they will have a problem the commentator's curse is real we're on fire today i have to say so ollie wilkinson then uh is about to put a lap on a one second stop go penalty for car 57 the gt4 championship lead is getting a stock go penalty now as well for a short pit stop their pit stop was one second under the minimum time and that will get them a penalty it's a bit of a it's quite a hard judgment call the drivers have to make you were discussing this with bryn actually uh off air earlier on um because the the team are counting you down the time limit is from pit in to pit out a stationary time right so the team anticipated they say right well if we release you at this time you'll get to the pit accident this time yeah and they only have to be a fracture now together with a lot of trouble look we have two countdowns we have our chief engineer talking to us now in our headset counting down ten nine they're counting to the to the exit of the pits and our job is to try and manage the speed between 40 and 50 k's so that we exit ideally on the minimum pit stop time but we also have a counter in the car and the two sometimes conflict right okay well yeah it is tricky and a lot of that decision often comes down to the driver but they're not necessarily the right position to make the call this is the 57 car coming in for a stop go so this is uh gus powers who is in here for his second and final stint in the race and 57 look almost certain now to lose the championship lead depending on how the tf sport strategy works out it definitely looks like it's going to work quite well the most frustrating thing you trundle down the pit lane it like seems to take forever and then you stop for a second and they say right on you go yeah it's the most frustrating thing you can experience it really genuinely is i think we're going to go and talk to bryn in a moment he's talking to the guys from bentley to find out what went on you've been causing problems up there with your commentary i've been chatting to the team parker racing guys and scott morgan got out the car and he said to me well he didn't know what the problem was some engine problem along the way losing power they poured the car into the garage and they've been pouring over it for the last five minutes or so and it seems to be an electrical problem they've been flipping away in the wires and i'm not sure if the car is going to get back out on track at the moment scott morgan doesn't seem too sure do you know graham whenever i hear the words it's an electrical problem my heart sinks because they are the hardest problems to diagnose once you diagnose them it's a pretty quick fix but it's finding out what exactly is wrong actually it's not a quick fix you know it is faster genuinely to change an engine than it needs to change your wiring yeah these wiring looms i promise you are a day or two days work and so the worst thing you can hear is its electrical problem we're talking about some cars have a mile of cable in them and you've got to find the problem yeah yeah exactly a car 1826 by the way no further actions so that is the team abacar and the ultimate speed car we never did get to the bottom of what the incident in question was but it clearly wasn't that's significant because we stayed in the park of course has decided no penalty is required now the battle for the lead is getting very tasty now as uh hollywood considers held up in traffic there the 58 hhc mclaren getting in the way and standard fielding 40 saw his chance to get alongside now you'd think that senator on the radio here too saying look that car in front of you has a penalty to serve uh you don't need to fight this dude don't have a penalty oh it doesn't just have confirmation that it doesn't have a penalty so this is a genuine fight for the lead so no wonder rolly's fighting it so hard the bloke wants to stay in front right okay there we go so apologies for that then the information we were given said that there was a penalty for 96 there is no penalty this is as grey of says a genuine fight for the lead so this is getting particularly tasty since jack mitchell is also taking time out of them as well john mitchell in the two seas car number 10 in third position he's only 1.3 seconds off the leads the top three covered by 1.3 seconds and his teammate d mcdonald wasn't far behind them but he's just died for the pit lane that might be a sign that uh jack mitchell is on his way to the pits fairly shortly as well more traffic that's warren hughes and the gt4 leader matt cowley uh who are rather holding up the overall race leader but again not much that cali could do about that really fielding with a good exit there from the old hair d mcdonald is in to hand back over to angus fender for the second time this race but what is going on on track it's still the mclaren in front but center field a bit of damage there to the front left corner again that's just superficial but uh the deeper we get into the race the more intensity you know the higher that intensity level gets the more anxious drivers are to make moves and get stuck in and uh i think we're going to see a lot more of this really close quartz racing going into the final hour yeah and i noticed that on occasion the uh the passenger mirror the right-hand mirror on uh on wilkins's car he's moving around a great deal now he might have a radar on the car and what do most of us have in the car is a camera facing back with lights that tell us if someone's getting closer it's like a disco in there the mirrors we don't use as much as we used to in the old days but i'll tell you what if it wobbles around like that it can be a real distraction and i think we saw the contact on that side of the car so yeah that's a good point as you and feeling i was about the very next question i was going to ask you is do stella bring the audi in because it's clearly getting held up yeah yeah they've done the right thing haven't they yeah absolutely also i mean by the way sam neary to hand over to his dad richard so this is now the second wave of second pit stops oh the audi there was a bit repeated getting in wasn't it yeah yeah it's difficult you know what you have to do it goes against every grain in your body when i've had to come in you have to go any slower but your brain thinks stop stop go quick quick quick and you can't because really just if you maneuver the car like you are in a multi-story car park you'll lose maybe a second but if you overshoot like you did there it could cost a lot more the fuel rig pipes are only as long as they are they often don't reach and the car has to be pushed back on occasion so it's a cool head that it's always a better a better approach yeah absolutely because you have that minimum pit stop time you kind of don't have to rush but that again is easier said than done in the heat of battle so uh now ollie wilkinson can breathe for a second but not for that much longer because chad hitchhill is now um closing in again 1.6 seconds off the race leave the moment and there is james baldwin now baldwin is a lap behind these cars but of course he has made his second pit stop already so uh he is not in direct competition with these cars but he will be essentially in competition with them by the end of the race and as we move towards that final set of pit stops we also have to start thinking about success penalties and that number two card does have the 15 16 15 second success penalty he's going to say to serve when we get to the final set of stops in comes um mitchell so number 10 is coming in from second place so only wilkinson now can agree the sigh of relief because he has uh got a slightly bigger cushion now over well who is now going to inherit second place it's going to be ballon isn't it so this will now almost put ballon uh back to the front of the field yeah wilkinson is triggering all these pit stops he's causing all these changes because people don't want to lose any time so i'm not saying he's slow but he isn't the fastest so when people are catching him the team are intelligently stopping the first oh hold on where have we got here where's that is into the last corner i think isn't that the old pit lane entry we see there yeah lukovsky in the number yes i know luke quite well he's uh a very experienced club racer and uh he and the taguwa uh squad are pretty well known actually uk motor racing you're making a big step up here into british gt that is the all am driven car so he and david whitmore uh are both graded drivers now they should be able to push that out the way sure i don't know i don't think there's an entry though i can't i don't know funny enough i've never pulled over that part of the day i don't think there's an entrance there so can you leave a car there for the whole race i'm not sure it's not in a dangerous position i'll tell you what the the the team principles are doing right now they wish we were focusing on that part so they could see if it would trigger is if there's a gate at the end of that path but it doesn't really matter once they get it out of the way it should be okay and it's downhill as well so the marshals ought to be able to get it out of the way but again this is a decision that lies with the clock of course beater daily whether or not we need a safety car he won't throw safety cars just for the sake of it peter he's reasonable he likes to let the race play out if he can the same car will only get thrown if it is uh the safest course of action and uh he will uh i'm sure be deliberating right now to see what exactly they do if we did get a safety car that would completely change the entire complexion of the race because we're not yet in the window that we can make our final set of pit stops and get that driver to the end so uh you would kind of be stuck and this is the gamble you take if you do take that early pit stop that we saw balor that we saw barwell and the tf sport squad tape you're kind of hedging your bets then that you won't get another safe start deep in the race which other people can benefit from but you can't because you've now tied yourself to that strategy yeah absolutely it's all about look it's so difficult you're trying to get the maximum time out of your fastest driver you're going looking for super for safety cars hoping they'll come at the same time other recovery cars that's good it's a very difficult balance i'm just watching balance and what's really interesting we watch she's lap time every time in clean air adam is quick he loses i mentioned it earlier so much time in traffic he's losing one to two seconds every lap just coming past gc4 cars and that is the difference that could be what wins this race or loses this race it really could what is he one minute third three seconds behind the minimum pit stop is andy 110 seconds 10 seconds so he's technically in the lead don't you throw questions like that i can't wait to have you back again uh yes so yeah you're right he will come back out with the race lead uh joe osborne by the way is third place though we all say some nice things about joe we'll see uh by regular co-commentator of this gt while he's back out for his second appearance uh of the season in uh third position and the balfour support squad they still owe us another pit stop but they will be uh happy to see that car running in a podium place uh right with news of rob cohan and hopefully uh able to shed some light on the farwell strategy and let's head back down to the pit lane to bring yes trusty is a question that uh has been asked a lot actually rob collard thought he was going to be out and sitting in the garage for quite some time but sandy mitchell had a valve come loose right so we had a very slow puncture they decided to make use of the pit stop and get robbed back into the car to complete his time so rather than throwing a pit stop away they thought they might as well make use of it so dull and dusted for rob collard well thank you green that's really interesting we had no idea about that so a couple of things then so that first of all is again why the teams love this format where you have freedom of pit stops in a normal race that would have been game over because that would have been an extra pit stop that you didn't need to take they can count that now as long as they work at the driver timings they can now count that as a mandatory stop i also wonder though because they were one of the first to come in and make that early second stop did that maybe trigger a few other teams sort of thinking oh well if they're doing it maybe we should be too and actually it was never planned yeah it's the far barwell are the masters of the raw book right i think chris nadal who who uh with mark lemmer owns the team i i think every night they read the raw book they do they know it better than anyone and the team is very well respected so when they do something a bit odd i'm afraid the other teams do sit there and watch oh well if they're doing it maybe we should little did they know they were recovering from the problem brilliant so uh and a couple of miraculous recoveries they haven't we ran racing with their spin in the first into bar well very much dodging a bullet there there with a slow puncture and this car is very much still in contention they're running down in night place at the moment but as i said we're still waiting for some of the pit stops to shake out uh they have lost some time to have they because they're behind the aldi they're behind angus fender behind santa han so uh they're also behind uh well optima of course have yet to come into the pit lane so i think they have lost a bit of time maybe from that but again could be a lot worse than actually the the stellar audi is only a couple of car lengths of the road so this is a a genuine fight position for a position now between richard williams and rob collard again both silver drivers would argue maybe rob is the more experienced maybe the quicker of the two uh certainly seems to be gained by the audi now and we know that when this all shakes out this should still be it for a position inside the top five yeah i mean you say it's a driver he made a mistake there on to the straight gone in too hard had to get out the throttle lost the rear of the car a little bit he's pushing guys missed the apex here so he's he's trying hard but let's be candid i'm sorry rob i'm about to say he's not as young as he used to be he barely got his helmet off he's back in the car he's gonna be tired he wanted a cup of tea and he didn't get to use the bathroom so this is about maximum mental strength and just focus focus focus he knows what's at stake here there's a potential podium or potentially even a win it's it's a point worth making i think i don't like to bang on about rob's touring car career because he's very much trying to try something new here in gts but touring car races are 20 25 minute long minutes long he's been racing in touring cars oh hang on he dropped myself because there's an incident being investigated here between cars 2 and 97 and also that is the number six car of ian loggie racing not for position though with adam balon that's ballon trying to put a lap on him they're also trying to lap the 97 cast this is all getting quite busy but back to rob carl for a moment touring car races 20 25 minutes he's been doing touring car racing for over 20 years now that has been his life little short shop 20-minute bursts of adrenaline and energy and then go sit down for a couple of hours away for the next race before that he had years of short over experience even shorter races are still very physical but not over an hour nearly an hour and a half in the car in the heat it's getting hotter now as well as the afternoon wears on that will take a toll on anybody if it's not what you're used to it's so true you know i started an endurance cartoon i was doing two to three hour races and i went and did my first sprint race in a caterpillar and i was just getting into a stride and someone put the checkered flag out and it took me a long time to recover when i came back to endurance racing was the most natural thing i could do and you're right he's got he's got to try and keep that level of focus i said earlier he's adapted to it brilliantly but are we watching baldwin here aren't trying to unlap himself from wilkinson well that could be an interesting dynamic couldn't because baldwin is on it he is lapping so quickly in the 28s when everyone else is in the 29 still and again look i'm going to point something out to you about balan we're not on screen at the moment but he's losing a heap of time behind noggy a heap of time that could be the difference between the race win or not yeah so to put that into perspective james baldwin who we're looking at now was the fastest man on the track last time 128.9 ballon 132 point three that is uh three and a half seconds that he's losing to james baldwin and they're not this is the the tricky thing though because they're not actually together on top they're not racing wheel to real but in an hour's time they might be for the race victory yeah um but it's quite hard sometimes for balon maybe to obviously he understands he's losing time but to understand the context of that it's quite hard i'd imagine when you're in the car in the heat of battle to really truly wrap your head around that well you mentioned it earlier what happened to him here a year ago he tripped over a car it's probably scarred him he's probably more cautious than he used to be and we're seeing a lot of caution from adam and so there'll be a bit of him that look he should pull over he should he's not in the fight with him but when have you ever seen a race driver pull over it doesn't matter if a position or not and so it'd be interesting to pan out just watching uh uh ollie here ollie will be determined to stay ahead of orbit bourbon is a gamer well actually he's not a gamer he actually has some races before they went gaming i think that's very important to say as a race driver gamers are good but race drivers are better um and uh and here he is now under pressure from this guy who's the world's fastest gamer and ollie wants a factory contact but this guy we're watching now surely he's destined for great things he's racing with jensen button i think people know of that guy he's got a little bit of influence you know and maybe a little bit of influence with mclaren maybe so right there in your mirrors is your future are you going to get a job or not well i better erase the bloke right yeah yeah that uh that jensen bloke what a world championship or something different pretty handy driver but so too is james baldwin and he is applying the pressure now to ollie wilkinson so as we've said this is not the position wilkinson is the leader but he's done one less pit stop than the number two car and we know a pit stop loses you around a lap or so total so uh this is still a significant battle to be had and anytime that baldwin loses stuck behind the optimum mclaren is genuine timeless that could play into optimum's hands afterwards especially considering they don't have a success penalty whereas the jetson t rocket rjn car the number two machine does that's put a lap on the speed works car by the way which we haven't really mentioned much the number 23 toyota james kell running fifth in gt4 at the moment they've made two pit stops so they have one more pit stop to complete and that toyota has well i was about to say the next car behind them is the number 57 championship leading hhc car except it won't be because that car has just been given a drive through this not the penalties penalty as well that that card had because 57 yeah they've already made three stops out of stock go for a short pit stop and now a drive through so what could a drive-through be track limits or some of the driving standards probably oh yeah and their trouble is we don't know do we but it's devastating this this will be the championship i mean they won't have the lead by the time this race is finished and you and i are destroying careers with everyone we talk about it's uh from here we have the the lamborghini back in the pits rob collard is in i assume he's now finished his minimum drive instant is it now mitchell to the end it must be touching yes because well it said there's 65 minutes to go and he definitely didn't do 35 minutes in his first did he so yeah i think they should they've worked in audis just within the window now to get to the end this therefore is their final pit stop this is where yeah they have to serve their 20-second success penalty so that 78 car is now going to fall further behind after this pit stop that it ordinarily would they've also made two pit stops though since the optimal car made its first so they're now a full two pit stop cycles ahead of some cars and they serve their penalty this is a risk though because if we now get a safety car their race is over you're right and it's such a balance i mean look they they didn't want to do that last time we know that we know they had a problem with a tire valve so this is a gamble that was forced upon them are we going to get a safety car well look we ran the whole of silverstone last year three hour race about a safety car we had one at the start yep accidents happen at the start should i put my neck on the line and say we won't have a safety car given the way today's gone that's the worst thing you could have done but uh yeah yes it's maybe not as likely as it would have been previously we have fewer gt4 cars for example that's true of a catalyst for drama and if you do go off here yes there's gravel traps and barriers you can hit or get stuck in um but you do have grass there are live snatch vehicles they can they can send out to uh remove the car as well so it's not like somewhere like alton park because where if a car goes off 90 chance there's going to be a safety car here there are ways around that there are ways you can avoid it we've got lucky with the 33 bmw where that stopped and uh all the instances we've had on track that haven't brought out a safety car so maybe not uh right out goes 78 right behind 72 i think although of course not on the same lap anymore or no they're all on the same lap because balan owes us his uh third pit stop sandy mitchell is in to the end then uh matt cowley is in as well to hand over to shaw now but again 20 second success penalty being served here because they won the race at brands hatch three weeks ago and uh the mustang it was leading earlier but now again interestingly they've chosen to take this pit stop at the earliest possible moment normally the pattern has been they lead and then they pitch and tf take the lead and then tf hit and they get the lead again but that doesn't happen this time they pitted before the ts4 class had this time i i think the tf 95 is the genuine leader yeah they don't have a penalty and and so connor he's actually doing very nice laps he's laughing in the 37s which is where he needs to be we can get into the 360s even better he's far far ahead now of that the number 97 the ram car yes that's what he's around guys it rams into this yes and so he's far away from that that's important and and look in actual fact number 97 is going to get distracted by a car but actually he's not in too much of a race with him i i think he's looking good for conor o'brien i do ironically speaking of ram the ram racing mercedes is right behind the mustang and that is a car that does not have a success penalty to serve that will they be their final pit stop so sam dehaan handing back over to patrick kujala uh 57 by the way their penalty just cleared that'll be it was a pit lane infringement i know no more than that but a plain infringement uh not a short pit stop because we know that's a different penalty uh so two times you could you have to put a clip for the for the uh to stop fire you have to put a little uh negative clip onto the back of the car so many teams forget to do it and if you do that or maybe you've got the fire engine nearby it gets you a penalty okay right so yeah that may well be what that was uh all about uh so around then who i think are still in contention if not for the win certainly for a podium here today i think there might be a safety car away from challenging for the week but uh the cars that were ahead of them by and large with the exception of 72 do have success penalties to serve so uh back out goes uh patrick kojala and the 69 car that was being driven by sam duhan is now back in the race there is ollie wilkinson still sitting on just one pit stop so they're gonna have to make two pit stops inside the final hour oh man yeah but you know you said it he's leading the race he doesn't need to let anyone buy all he's doing right now is costing the car that probably could win yep a chance of winning because the guy's stuck behind him he's got absolutely no obligation to him but you know what i'd do the same i wouldn't die either because the thing is 96 is a lap ahead of number two being lapped by number two in which case there is a responsibility to get out of the way he has absolutely no responsibility to make life easy here for james baldwin and again this is a situation that james may not be used to he's new to racing at this level multi-class racing you know dealing with pit stop strike strategies and things and he'll be sitting there now and it's it the team will need to be coaching you don't get frustrated coming to the pit lane there you go that's a good way of getting out of trouble so chase baldwin is in and michael michael o'brien will take over for the final pit stop 15 second success penalty to be served here there might be an element of reaction here as well because the 78 car is just pitted 69 are pitted there the cars they're essentially fighting with here uh and are on a similar strategy with so i suppose it makes sense to kind of copy what they do yeah look at that look to the left of the screen brand new boots to michael o'brien you watch this kid go when he gets in i think we're going to see him look one thing michael doesn't like doing is being slow than anyone but he's quick anyway i think actually that played them back into contention right that stop at that moment is is yeah good timing so i think i know sean goff i used to race with sean gough he's the owner of optimum motorsport he's a he's a proper yorkshire don't let this guy go but timing hasn't worked in their favor uh no and of course it may well have been that jet city rocket rjn would have wanted to bring the two car in earlier but they couldn't because of this maximum maximum driver time so there is a bang on an hour left basically it might be that michael could do much more than that or therefore they had to leave him out so you are kind of restricted by the strategy but there is a lot more freedom than there ordinarily would be worth mentioning as well that we do run the same uh system uh at silverstone in our regular uh three-hour race of course we are yet to go to silverstone for the silverstone 500 this year uh silverstone has the honor of hosting the championship deciding race for the intelligent money british gt championship this year it's not a donington decider as it has been in recent years a silverstone showdown instead to decide the championships and that is going to be a really great way to round out the season yeah we're just seeing a couple on our screens there's going to be an incident involving the car on screen now number two uh and car number 97 they're going to investigate it after the race so we didn't see that on television i'm not sure what's taking place there 97 is of course the gt4 aston martin the tf one yes i'd imagine that's an issue with uh back markery and lapping uh the slower car maybe there was a bit of contact not too sure uh the 61 car then is uh the uh academy motorsport ford mustang being driven now uh in this final stint by jordan albert who put such a great stint in in the previous race at grand hatch 72 lee does not lead the way yet adam balum on the previous lap was about uh second and a half or so slower than olly will see he is in danger here being caught by joe osborne but joe osborne is not on the same stint as ballard uh osborne is a pro ballon now as we've documented but still we could have a battle here uh for second place you could see joe in the white and orange mclaren i have to say i do like that literally as well very clean livery yeah on the balfour mclaren this year and uh joe osborne who was fighting for the race lead here a month ago when he last raced in the championship and uh been a busy boy he's been racing over in europe a lot this year with other mclaren customer teams and this is the life of a pro driver is that you go to a different racetrack often in a different country with a different team a different co-driver every week and that's how you make your living it is it's a real talent though because they drive fast but the real thing to being a professional race driver is actually working with people like me i'm a bronze driver and working with people like me you know we're businessmen and we don't get to spend the time in the car it's the single biggest difference it's not to do with talent he says as a bronze driver obviously i'm as fast but he isn't seriously it's to do with him outside these guys their office is the pattern their office is the car and you know to them it's just normal for you this is exciting to watch the viewer oh my goodness you like this is just normal regular daily like in fact you know what if they're honest sometimes it's a bit of a grind so yeah yeah it's it's like turning up to someone's office and sitting on their desk and going oh my god he answered the phone oh my god this is the most exciting thing i've ever seen it's just it is a day job for them this is what they what they do to make a living but it is rather a nice job to have it's got to be said and joe osborne is pretty good at it he's also quite a good commentator but don't tell him i said that and he's not well i couldn't possibly comment uh yes he he will be back in the comments box later on this year but for now he's enjoying himself racing against adam balon and uh he will be applying the pressure here to one of our championship contenders it's funny it was joe that uh that was telling us the story of donington a year ago about how you could apply pressure to championship contenders the jar of mayonnaise was involved in some way i can't quite remember he will be i'm sure recalling that story now because he's hid in the the person he was talking about was ahead of allen and uh should be quite an interesting dynamic when you've been commentating on people maybe you don't expect to ever have to race against them again and now he's out on track with these people there might be a few scores to be settled yeah i mean i'll be honest i've been rude about a few people so i'm staying up here so late and everyone's going home but i think it's interesting for me what are they going to tell balance what will the team tell balance will they tell him let osborne go ballon's got another 15 minutes in the car i think it might be another 13 minutes it's something like that so probably the best thing to do is let him go because we know that adam in clean air is much better than adam that's anywhere near anyone else so i think that's interesting to watch when are they gonna stop this car well uh yeah well the same time probably that joe osborne stops because these are the two cars on the same strategy aren't they either of them have made their second or third pit stops yet but they've got to be getting up towards the end of driver limits and remember both joe osborne and donnie wilkins have to get back in the car at the end so might they do a reverse of the barwell strategy and pit very late inside the five or five minutes maybe so leave this drive really get them out the car when they've got about five minutes left of their driver time and then plug them in right at the end of the race that's the traditional part that's what you'd normally do but barbells triggered everyone into stopping early exactly so far well our trend setters here in the british gt championship battle for position here dan vaughan and james kell third place in gt4 for grabs here and the 97 tf sport aston martin is this a genuine fight yes it is they both made two pit stops so uh they are on the same or similar strategies here and uh this is uh it's always interesting to watch this toyota it is new to the championship as we've said uh it certainly looks like it's uh it it's a quick car out there seems to handle well uh but as they develop it and the season goes on it's only going to get quicker and quicker and quicker what we don't necessarily know yet is where it is particularly strong is it one of those cars that's put on the brakes good change of direction through the chicago he gets straight on the inside of dan ford i think the simple answer is that car's quite good everywhere isn't it yeah it was interesting i was thinking the same as you andy i wanted to see where his trims were and we know that actually he's not that strong on the brakes from last time look look at the car back that uh is it caroline that's all right i mean as it happens it's done to be honest with you can't this is a pretty bizarre little corner it's got you can't see it on tv but trust me it's got a lot of camber in it and unless you hold that car in tight if the car washes wide it understeers off into the grass so i think that's job done now but i think it's here where we see the toyota's particularly strong so we're watching round term one i think we're seeing advantage i think in the high speed stuff it's clearly very very very good uh yeah it seems to have uh good lateral grip as joe osborne is in so uh yes indeed which will be uh oh the damp and sweaty i'd imagine after that's not natural it's a long quite a long stint i'm choosing to ignore you uh quite a mclaren driver and uh joe osborne well he'll head back over to stuart before the shortest amount of time possible with the greatest perspective but uh but joe this is the other tricky thing of course stewart is the customer at the end of the day he needs to make sure he's getting value for money but uh and since they're not necessarily in the fight for overall honors they might uh choose to let him have a bit more time behind the wheel so there is the number two car there which has now dropped of course down to seventh place after making its third and final pit stop so the cars that have made three pit stops that have not been penalties that is still the car that is the highest placed uh with three stops and loggies ahead of him one of those three stops was a penalty being served there the 69 car has also made three pit stops and jack mitchell likewise so that is the battle isn't it 2 10 and 69 i think they're all done for pit stops now they've served all of their success penalties this is a straight race to the end now yeah and michael's pace i predicted i didn't know michael's face on this set of tyres is a lot better and i i think we know he's on brand new boots we know he's got brand new tires and as i said earlier there's one or two seconds of lap in the first part of the stick we know he's also a safe pair of hands but then jack mitchell gt4 champion in 2018 with century for remember rightly um and and is a very experienced guy he's done ginetta's uh on the toga package um knows what he's doing what do we got going on here we got lewis yeah that lewis going into the lead car yes so this will be and they're in now i believe they're in the pit lanes ollie wilkinson is in for his second pit stop uh but as we've said that car will back in fairly shortly you'd imagine for its third and final pit stop so of course one of the benefits of this is you can steal a march on those that have had to serve success penalties because uh they've already certainly haven't made their final stop they've dropped further back you can gain yet more track position on them this way this will give the race lead to adam balon he's not yet come through in the 72 lamborghini but balan will get the lead he still owes us a pit stop angus fender and richard williams will go second and third also owing a pit stop uh and we wait and see where the number 96 car comes out in relation to 210 and 69 because it was in that little group wasn't it of course uh some of them have had success penalties to serve so they may come out in front of them again sam neary here in the number eight karma team apple racing car sam has been a bit of a revelation this year and he's going well out there again today his father richard who he shares the car with is down in the pits with grim yeah he certainly has got out the car has uh been able to dry off a little bit but you finished your stint now so sam's gonna take the entire time is that the right yeah that's right we uh we sort of elected to go really really long with our first stint to get my driving time out the way sam's a good second and a half quicker than me so but sam's in now to the flag and we think we've got all our am time out the way earlier than all the other teams which should mean that we should gain track position at the end but you know you never know to the end no absolutely not was that the plan for the start yes yeah we didn't change our strategy with the incidents that happened at the beginning didn't affect what we were doing it helped us in a way because all i was trying to achieve on my first in was to just stay in touch with the cars in front and then overtake them by doing the longer duration yeah well they had problems and we didn't so we were lucky although i did get knocked into the pit lane on the opening lap i took every one of those uh little markers out one of the blue mclarens pushed me across into the pit lane but it was all good the car wasn't damaged really so all went to plan apart from the drama we'll keep an eye on it thank you absolutely thank you very much right the optimum car thanks brent the ultimate car has just come out of the pit lane i'm just desperately trying to figure out where they came out i think they have been big winners in all of this but of course they have another pit stop still to serve yeah which is what's confusing me so uh yeah they uh they are out of sequence now essentially with a lot of those that they're racing wins and the 96 car will not have dropped quite as many places as it otherwise might have done there it is it's now um being driven by lewis proctor as we've said but he will have one more pit stop to make uh so that's two stops done for them two stops also completed for the 72 barber car now that's the big question so barwell's adam ballet is how far he's about a minute ahead of michael o'brien isn't it it's gonna be quite tightness isn't it i think in theory balance should come out with the lead but not by a huge margin the key is though that it's phil keane getting into the final since who should be quicker than those around him but it's going to be quite tight yeah i mean based on our form today we've probably just cursed uh cursed allen but you're right mathematically uh you're right he's about it's gonna be a really tight reason and if you look at michael o'brien he's only 1.9 seconds ahead of jack mitchell in in the two seas mclaren but michael is doing a better job he's putting away on every sector of every lap not so i think that battle is probably done i think the next battle we need to look for is patrick in number 69 he's only three tenths of a second behind the two season the power that's where the strap is and that scrap really is for third place when things pan out uh yeah and none of those cars that you just mentioned 210 or 69 oh as a pit stop anymore this car does adam balon so there you can see that's a handy graphic good time as well just talking about it so remember it's a minimum of three pit stops but some of these pit stops ian loki being a prime example are penalties not pit stops so this is actually the final pit stop being made for the number six round racing car and yelmer bourbon will be getting in for the final three quarters an hour or so in car number six but uh certainly ballon proctor bender williams they all owe us one more pit stop and once they serve those pit stops uh they will be and we'll have a clearer picture of what the order is going to be but as we've said they could certainly pissed off within reason uh wherever they want to the hhc car is in that is 58 patrick mathiason and mathiason uh brought that car in from second place in gt4 and 58 i think i'm writing saying yeah they didn't finish at brown touch didn't they of course so they have no success penalty to serve that's through goes louie's proper siesta he's only dropped down to second place because a lot of the people that he was racing with have made an extra stop yeah we just had a stop go penalty come up for number 26. that's the new aston that's out isn't it so yeah if it's infringement we're told that won't have a significant effect on the race but what will have a significant impact on the race is actually the pit stop we just watched the test and is he leading the race they've done their three stops he wasn't far behind conor o'brien the lead car at the moment it's so hard to know isn't it yes if you think back now what was it now uh over two hours ago that the tf pulled the pin earlier yeah they pulled their cars in on on lap two uh let's it's so difficult to work out what the optimum stretch in this uh strategy is i don't know i've done it now i've said october i'm just trying to yeah so the tf cars they both yeah they they're still get to make their final pistol so they pitted very early the first time but now they're gonna have to get late yeah for their final pistol this is the battle you wanted to see the one between uh the uh patrick kayala uh 69 mercedes and the jack mitch from the 10 mclaren this is for uh sixth place at the moment but as we made the point it could be for a podium place uh once we get to the end of the race oh that mclaren didn't look very happy over the curves he's in the gravel trap yeah it didn't look like that was uh the ideal line through the corner uh you said yourself you have to be careful those curves and some cars are more sensitive to the curves of the others no he was being caught like i always talked to you about this denial is driving in your rearview mirror not driving out the front of the car the track is ahead of you it's not behind you what he's done there is he's carried too much speed into the asses and when you carry too much and it's too late once you've committed you go over the over the curbs we're about to watch a replay in a second you'll see he launches the car in the problem is on the way in on the way out he's had no choice smack the curves lost the rear of the car a bit did well to gather it up i mean he's going to lose a lot of time there and i think that's probably third place gone uh it may well be because i think that cajala will now pull the pin he's been released he's only two and a half seconds behind o'brien so again o'brien won't be too happy about that because i reckon kajal i might have the pace to catch him yeah i think you're right i i'm desperate for them to pit adam allen i don't want to see this race by my calculations adam must be due to stop any second now i bet adam's keen to get home the bloke's leading the race and he wants his super mega quick superstar co-driver to get in and lead this race room i think it's going to be so tight on the exit of the bitly so how long do we think phil keane did at the time it was over here 10 or so something like that so uh by that reckoning they can't bring ballon in i reckon until about half an hour to go because otherwise he's going to exceed 100 minutes 26 is in trouble they're in trouble with peter daley the clock of course you have to be given a penalty and now they've got some sort of mechanical drama now let's hope this car can make it back to the pits it doesn't appear to have much power but i think it's got some power it's not ground to hold completely yet let's uh let's hope that uh matt manderson who is the pro driver in that car can get it back to the pit lane without stopping on track and causing a safety car mine goes through reggae that's angus fender running in third position at the moment three and a half seconds behind lewis propped up but about six tenths of a second slow at that time because uh we believe he got held up in some traffic right on board though with the two seas car down through the crane occurs one of the most exhilarating sequence corners in british if not world motorsport i love donnie dunnington is my absolute favorite track because there are only two slow corners i mean who wants to go slow right i'm a race driver i want to go around fast corners and all of these corners are very very quick interesting to note he was using third round there what would he use here third gear again when i raced the previous generation car the mclaren 650 around here we were doing those corners in second gear which sounds surprising but second gear trust me it's still very very quick you know we're doing sort of 60 80 miles an hour on there but this car has been really developed very well developed by rob bell the factory driver and joe joe osborne's been in there a little bit as well not too much because he's not very good but but um he's going to get me for this you are so much trouble but uh but yeah so rob bell's developed this car rob bell little known facts about the factory driver rob belt he he beat lewis hamilton to the formula uh renault championship so you've got a guy of that caliber developing this car put someone like angus in there who's pitting now and of course he's got a car that's seriously sorted yeah so angus is in then from third position for the final pit stop the number nine car uh last time at brands hatch did not triple the podium it was 11th place after getting involved in a few bits of contact 57 are in as well that's the uh carl and both leading the gt4 championship because powers is in let's hand over to chris westmail and the speedworks are in as well so that's james kell yes handing over to sam smelt a former btcc racer from a year or so ago is sam and that will be their final pit stop as well and the uh yeah the speed works car fourth at brown tattoo again no success penalty for them so it is all starting to unravel now it's all starting to become a little bit clearer but in gt3 we are as we've said still waiting for adam alan and lewis proctor to come in uh for their final hit stop each tie change there for hsc and then they're doing the right adjustment they're lowering the ride height so what's going on there is the drivers can play in the rear of the car's loose so you're trying to put freight in the car to try and get the car to turn so you're trying to break things the car's nose down so they lift the rear of the car to try and get it to turn but that can make the back of the car very loose and i know this car better than i know my wife and i'm the car can be very loose on the rear but then he understeers you're fighting this dreadful balance of well i want the thing to turn but i don't want it to turn too much so they've lowered the ride height there i think to try and stabilize it and they didn't change tires so the driver is clearly very unhappy with the balance uh yes so that well that's i i saw him doing something but i wasn't sure if it was damaged or an adjustment so that's quite interesting and of course again they have time to do this because of this minimum pit stop time also remember they are serving a 10 second success penalty too so uh because plays last time an extra you might as well use that time if you've got it you've got to serve it you might as well utilize it and try and make the car handle better although unusual you know i i may not trust me i've moaned a lot about setup but i've never seen anything like that before so uh adam ballen then is leading the way lewis proctor is in second place 10.4 seconds behind so this is our first signal i think for how this race is going to pan out because these two are both on the same strategy they might pit at different times but they both have one more pit stop to make procter could could catch ballon here he's over two seconds a lot quicker and uh as we've said as soon as he hits traffic seems to lose even more time so a couple of points here not only does it mean that fallon's gonna have to watch his mirrors because optimal are arriving but does this mean that the 72 car is not going to come out with the race lead once all the pit stops are done i've sort of counted out the ottoman car maybe i shouldn't have done i mean lewis is on new tires let's let's put that perfectly right he's taking a lot of curves i don't know if you watch there through the essence of the car bounced around and um i mean lewis is on a mission he's driving very well with 28.8 on the last lap what is that three temps off the best lap the car's done all right they're clearly on a mission i i know that the the the proctors and the uh wilkinsons haven't always seen eye to eye but this sort of thing i bet they'll be best friends if they win uh well and it would be just the confidence boost that they and that tv they sit seventh in the championship they've only had uh one overall podium so far this leader that this uh this season excuse me as the leader goes past the gt4 leader conor o'brien there's put another lap on him conor o'brien still owes us one more pit stop so two does his teammate dan ball uh they are separated by an ever increasing margin 95 definitely seems to have the edge here today don't they that gap has been growing and growing uh throughout the course of the race and we ride on board with conor o'brien now the irish driver heading through uh mclean's corner and dan vaughan yeah wow 38.4 seconds he's pulled this car has pulled on the sister car they've had the same number of pit stops they're on the same strategy as well uh that is not going to make uh jamie caroline and dan ball very happy is it especially after what happened a few weeks ago yeah well let's see what the balance of this car is like oh where's this that is d mcdonald from seventh place they just made their final pit stop remember and that looks like the old hairpin now he's not stuck in the gravel but the car is not going anywhere and you'll know this as well when the engines are hot they've been running for a while if you stall it it can be quite hard to get it fired back up well actually i happen to know not from my own experience that if you go backwards in this car and if you spin backwards and you don't drop the clutch tip don't get buried in the gravel dean oh have you got it out i can't watch he's just down so yeah if you go backwards in these cars and you don't get the clutch down fast enough it can it can destroy the whole power train yeah so i wondered there if he had a small problem but i'd like to take a small one look what he's just done he's cost himself so much time do you think he's left damage hasn't it let's see so on board then into the old hairpin what happens it's the kiss the curb too hard chuck the car around simple as that he took too much curve i i think there's damage to the left rear what i don't know is whether he damaged it by hitting the curb or through the speed or whether it would damage it uh but uh it was a it was again right he's got a puncher yeah yeah so that's not what happened the car we saw in he took a lot of curve in the car it could be effect rather than chords i guess yeah yeah it could be yeah i mean that but that look that's their race effectively over isn't it he needs to try and get off the racing line if you can um what a shape as well because we've been saying all day two seasons need a good result and both cars had potential in this race to get really good results now okay the number 10 car could still be in contention for a podium but the the number nine car has been up there as well hasn't it yeah it has it hasn't they you need two things in racing you need to be fast then you need to be lucky yeah yeah exactly so the left rear puncture for the number nine mclaren and uh well maybe we can have a word with the team and find out whether that caused the spin or whether it was as a result of the spin adam balon leads the way then uh and what's the gap over lewis procter in the optimum motorsport mclaren now it is 4.8 seconds while it was over 10 seconds about three laps ago this is incredible for lewis proctor he is no doubt about it going to catch adam alan here now again to put this into constant context balan is a bronze braided driver he is not supposed to be as quick as lewis proctor um and the payoff for that is that when phil key gets in the car he should be quicker but this is the problem you see the outsiders in traffic did you see exactly they're losing so much time yeah look it's not an app driver thing it's a it's a there's too much made of adam versus but there is genuinely we all have the same ability right we've got hands feet it's it's all about that mental game and as i said earlier adam had a problem here it cost him the title last year and there's trump that was huge caution from him yeah he could have easily said that no problem at all he must have lost in that one sector alone at least one and a half seconds you can't do that kind of mistake you've got to you've got a signal strong aggressive moves so dean mcdonald then back out of the pit lane and that of course was an unscheduled stop so the fourth stop of the day for them and they come out just in front of the 33 bmw which is relevant only in that they've got that car sort of whatever the problem was that uh saw it stop out on track earlier on david whitmore is back out in the tagiwa livery century motorsport bmw as they fight for the lead he's not flashing his head yeah that's what's going on so now that could be as a result of that curb strike i guess no he's lost the tyres coming off the rim what is going on in that car yeah so if the suspension's damaged the tire might not be sitting in there right but surely they should have is the wheel on properly they look like suspension collapse to me yeah so that's so the tire hasn't actually gone they probably just didn't realize they assumed that the reason for the puncture was just a puncture forgive me but you think you've noticed yes but uh they didn't so they uh have uh they're gonna have that and of course the problem is now they can do more damage by dragging the car around the truck like that so uh from bad to worse i think is the expression isn't it that would fit the number nine car at the moment and it is going to be caught by the overall race leaders going into the foggerty esses which is about the worst place you can find a a car limping back with a problem adam ballard if he's been tentative and cautious around the left traffic he's definitely definitely gonna catch his attention only two and a half seconds behind him the start of the lap is only about two and a half car lengths back now this is for the race team both of these cars are on the same strategy balan makes a bit of a mistake there's the head he defended fresh air he called the curb it bounced the car wide look it doesn't matter if you lose the lead don't lose time he's turned it in early again you see he's he's defending far far far too early when you defend early you cost time he can't lose time the thing is i suppose we in his mind the every lap he keeps that mclaren behind it is two and a half seconds maybe less that phil keane has to buy back at the final stick so just just trying to think like an am driver you know maybe he's thinking if i can just hang on it's a risk because it could all go horribly wrong but if he can just hang on for another until the end of his stint maybe or even just for another couple of laps that could be huge speaking of huge this is the third place patrick cajala ahead of michael o'brien the reason that is so significant is that they are the highest placed cars that have completed all of their stops so depending on where the 72 and 96 cars come out this could be for the race leads michael had a ridiculously slow lap the last lap out 131-1 that that was uh slower than than adam who we know was well as we can see he's under huge pressure so that map i would not want to bet my house and he's gonna win this thing michael o'brien is matching as you said balance but kujala is not as quick as proctor has been so if proctor can clear the lamborghini quickly it's over yeah he's going to get a good round of the chicane he's got the inside line for the melbourne hairpin and dad is trying to squeeze but the orange mclaren is already there it's not like you can miss that car in your mirrors really is it it pulls alongside it goes in front and louis proctor takes the race lead for october motorsport with 32 and a half minutes left on the clock and what more pit stops we serve for both of these cars where will they come out in the amongst the rest of the field we can't be far away here from barwell pitting that 72 car and it's almost almost like i know what i'm talking about it comes i thought it was going to be around the half hour mark in they could he's just showing off so that lap to my point i made a lap ago that one lap that uh adam allen held on that was two and a half seconds now that phil keem does not have to find his final stint i'm gonna employ you as my next uh race engineer because you caught that absolutely right and i mean look the reality is that adam he i keep talking about it looks in his mirrors too much into the s's he cost himself a heap of time i knew it was done before he did i called it before because he cost himself too much time on entry cost time on entry get uh uh loses penalty in the exit what we got here seven in the pit lane not for a pit stop but for a 16 second stop go penalty what do you do to get that well a short pit stop but surely not by 16 seconds i wonder if they've forgotten about the 14 seconds silver uh because each i don't know it's only a gt4 thing so okay no actually i have no idea but somehow they've miscalculated fingers and toes i think they have haven't they the uh so that car has a 16 second penalty which is what they're serving right now as here is the 69 car so when these cars come across the start finish line this time they should be somewhere in the vicinity of the 72 lamborghini and that will be a genuine fight for position it's phil keaton's getting into the 72 lamborghini this along with when the 96 car makes its final pit stop this is what's going to shape the final half hour of the race i mean what are we watching here are we watching the fact that the mercedes so the mclaren is harder on its tires and the mercedes i mean if you look at the last lap michael 28 29 8 patrick in the mercedes almost one and a half seconds faster leader stops let's see what happens now who's going to come out ahead right so through kajala and o'brien so yes so there we go they did not manage to get the lead so the race lead at the end of all of this i think is going to be held by patrick cajala in the 69 mercedes uh 96 is in the pit lane as well then and uh so that car is up on the jacks right before this war goes really crazy which i think is about to in the next 60 seconds or so let's head down to the pit lane for a two season motorsport update brim we will uh try to get hold of print in a moment or two he's uh uh we will get in touch with him and hopefully find out what's going on with two c's but uh yes so i reckon at the moment the order is going to be 69 two and then either 72 or 96 depending on how good phil keane's out lap is here there is phil keem going through coppice corner so it's not quite worked out but when they pitted this car at the end of the opening lap of the race they were about eight they were wired back in the midfield by the time that adam balon had been able to even think about overtaking a few people they could have been 20 seconds off the lead they're not gonna be 20 seconds off the lead now so this strategy has not got them the lead but it's worked it has worked look phil phil is wrestling that guy he knows this is one of the most important outlaps he's ever driven i'm just looking at his sector times middle sex was okay wasn't electric he's got to get a bit more heat into those tyres they come out of an oven the tyres come out of an oven already warm but they lose temperature sitting idle in the pit lane and it's not a warm today it isn't right here we go this is the battle for the lead it looks like king's got it uh yeah well for third place really we think isn't it because they're behind kajal and o'brien okay sorry yes so because yeah they are then that is now confirmed so phil keane has come out behind those two but ahead of the mclaren so that one outlap that he's had was enough to undo and this again that's my point i'm not right often so i'm gonna make the most of this if ballon had led him through one lap earlier keane would not have come out in front of the mclaren he would have had to overtake it on the track yeah just not an attractive uh winner i think that we're going to pass down to bryn now and find out what's happening uh with car number nine with mcdonald and two sees mclaren or not bryn are you there i hope we haven't lost britain because he's been finding some very interesting stories for us we will get to the bottom of this some sort of communication issue in the moment i i know bryn is not shy so i think there might be a there might well be a technical issue which will get to the bottom of let's focus on the racing for now though because at the end of this lap the timing screen should now represent the actual order because everybody i believe certainly of the front runners in gt3 um have now completed their final uh pit stops and it was a broken wishbone we're hearing for two seas thanks bryn so uh broken wishbone that uh has and now whether that caused the off or was a result of the off we don't know through then comes patrick cajole and he has a 2.7 second lead over michael o'brien in the number two mclaren third place is the number 10 two-season clown which we forgot yeah so that is actually in third position he's now being driven by jack mitchell 4.7 seconds behind o'brien phil keane is 2.3 seconds behind him in fourth and ollie wilkinson is fifth the further 1.3 back the key here is they are four silver graded drivers and phil keem phil keane should be the fastest of that group can he gain nine point seven seconds on patrick cajala and overtake everybody in 27 minutes he needs a safety car i think it's probably their only chance he's laughing really well in 2026 but then patrick in the lead he's only three temps slower um looking at gt4 just quickly conor o'brien in the uh 95 tf i think he's got this thing sewn up uh yeah he's made all of his pit stops hasn't he and he is according to my time between a lap ahead of anybody else got stopping here if i just ah that's 95 no so they've just made their final game as three stops yeah so they were in the pit lane at the time so they are going to have them either because i don't think they're going to lose two laps uh in the pit stop well yes unless something goes drastically wrong so conor o'brien will hand over uh to his uh co-driver patrick kibble and we hope to see the checkered flag this time rather than end up in the gravel trap the gt3 leaders go through so here we go then nearly three about two and a half hours just over two and a half hours of racing gone by the top five cars are eleven and a half seconds apart this fallback works doesn't it yeah just a little bit it's so much to play out i'm just looking at phil king's last lap he went half a second fast for the jack mitchell in front of him in the mclaren who was three tenths slower than michael o'brien who was two temps slower than patrick in the 69 i mean what the the top four are covered by what is that something like 20 seconds i i don't know and a safety car could easily come at any moment uh well yeah that that is the other thing that would completely change this so on the previous lap phil keane did a one minute 28.5 slower than patrick cujala the race leader uh now okay and i know phil's been out there for a few laps the tires should be up to pressure we don't know what part traffic had to play without although i haven't seen a huge amount of traffic uh in the last few laps uh the so the fastest of the leading five cars which realistically are the contenders right now uh was the race leader second fastest was phil keem third fastest with michael o'brien fourth fastest ollie wilkinson the slowest of that group um was uh jack mitchell the only one in one minute 29 to the man in third place so it's not as simple as the leader is quicker than second place who's bigger than third or vice versa they're all pretty equal they're going to keep trading lap times aren't they it doesn't look like anyone has a significant advantage over the others no and i think that mercedes is very kind on its tyres i think it clearly has an advantage the engines in the front so technically there's less weight of the rear wheels what we just cut to now is the fight for the lead i think it is we think it's for the lead because of course the other car is still in the pits so at the moment i think we've just seen that collard well the moment they're still second place of course we're waiting they had a two lap lead didn't they yeah so we don't know how this is going to play out that's what i'm trying to work out i don't know whether 95 has just got back out i think they might still be ahead but they built up nearly a full lap possibly but remember they didn't have a success penalty because they got nerfed into the gravel by their teammates so maybe they'll all will be forgiven now if they win this race on the back of that i've somehow doubted it [Laughter] i just i just think it's a bit of juicy gossip i like stirring the pot uh no the the 95 car might actually but that and that is actually and this is again once what joe osborne always tells me if you keep finishing fourth keep scoring good points but don't pick up success penalties it's not actually a bad way to go about winning a championship no one's brave enough to try it but if you find yourself losing out on a podium all is not necessarily lost this is why joe has never won a challenge that's not true i've i i've been fortunate enough to win a couple of championships in this series and uh we we did it by winning races we did it by finishing on the podium our our worst result was on was on fifth place you need to finish as high as you can and what we see here with 61 with uh is it albert in the car jordan chasing down he's old mate jordan collard two jordans racing each other what we're seeing here is that they know how important it is to win it's absolutely vital look a win is worth 10 points more i mean 10 points off it's nice fourth place won't cut it uh no absolutely well if you've got a chance to go for the win you may as well with these longer races you've got a much better chance of getting over those success penalties uh lap time wise between these two at the moment 61 drawn now but uh 1.3 seconds behind your collar and they have got a head of kibble so that was the position yeah so the uh it was just a longer stop because of that silver cup uh success penalty that they have to take as well so if jordan collar then leads in gt4 now the 58 hhc car has yet to win a race this year despite finishing on the podium in almost every race but that long finish at rams hatch last time that means they're 22 and a half points off the championship lead here is phil keemen he's caught jack mitchell for third place overall so now phil dean uh the festival one of the fastest cars in this leading group has caught one of the slowest cars in the leading group and he needs to make sure now that this doesn't take too long it is one thing to catch another car but to overtake it is another matter entirely he can't afford to waste too much time here yeah what we're about to witness is a bloke who's at the top of his game i think you'll probably pass mitchell pretty quickly and look he's lapping 1.7 seconds faster than my mate michael o'brien he's second place absolutely on cars there's still 21 minutes to go yeah well he's got time if he gets past this number 10 car quickly which he does he goes up the inside into red gate corner but the door is closed in his face jack mitchell's not gonna make this easy why should he this is for uh third place overall and phil keane is getting a little bit frustrated here right let's uh very quickly head back down to bring in the pits yeah thanks very much there to uh andy to graham i've got here connor o'brien handing over to patrick a few moments ago now hopefully you guys aren't going to have what happened at brown's hatch happened today yeah yeah it's actually we don't know that it was a gutting way to win that day you know but uh we're looking good sat pictured away but hopefully patrick can get a hustle on with this mustang and see if we can get any closer to it really well i'm just looking at the timing screens right now trying to work out exactly where you are all pit stops done all pit stops around you so it's worked out quite nicely it worked out really nice we've done an early stop with the safety car to start the race so we were kind of one pit stop up ahead of everyone else so we kind of knew it was even gonna pay out or we were gonna lose and just very very quickly tell us what it was like after the race at brown's hash what did the conversations go like since then yeah it was uh an interesting one yeah i disappeared off and uh left it to the team to deal with it and to be fair they've done a good job so we'll uh it's a lot more respect and both cars have driven really well this weekend and way for expected detail though and it's been really good thank you very much there you go andy they're kissed and made up well there we go that's uh interesting stuff thanks brian meanwhile phil keane is into third place ahead of jack mitchell perfect timing there just as the interview finished he made the move into red gate and the lamborghini is through right next job catch and overtake michael o'brien who is 3.7 seconds further up the road keane is 9.9 off the lead still so that gap hasn't changed really since he came out of the pit lane so he's not lost any times took behind jack mitchell but he's lost time in the sense that that was five minutes now that he spent following the mclaren not chasing after the cars in front yeah i mean although even though following him his pace was good i'd be fascinated to see what sort of speed king's got in him i'm i'm moderately convinced he's going to catch michael o'brien in the time we've got and i think michael's tires are in trouble although his pace has just ran into 28-7 but we're waiting to see keaney's operating on a different level today isn't he he's absolutely on it and as i said earlier he's got he's got a real a lot of pressure on him from sandy mitchell who's sandy mitchell don't forget carrie's a heavier car yeah you know because he hasn't gone for he's not a pro and car he's got a lot more weight in the car and his performance has been stunning over the lot over the last few races but phil keaton's showing his true class here yeah he is he's already gapping the mclaren isn't he in the middle sector on this lap he was uh about three quarters of a second jack mitchell so as he comes across the start finish line he's now 9.2 seconds away from the race lead that's the first lap for a while he was quicker than the leader and he wasn't just a little bit quicker he was eight tenths quicker than the race leader here we go this is what i'm talking about he's been told on the radio that you can win this thing yeah if you punch in 20 seconds every lap you punch in low 28's every lap you can win this week we've got 18 minutes how many laps is that left to go andy about eight nine laps is that about right yeah well about a minute and a half aren't there laps so we should get about now about like about 12 laps or something you better master me and so then he's laughing he needs to he needs to laugh what the frequency of a second lap faster to catch the leader which is doable i didn't do it but he's got to first overcome michael o'brien and leave himself time to actually do something about patrick when he gets there so you always need to work a few laps ahead of that don't you to make sure that you uh leave yourself enough time to do it it's gonna be fascinating this uh gt4 by the way it's still jordan cola leading now by one point two seconds over jordan albert so actually we mentioned earlier on the hhc were leading the class and that gap is going out rather than down and patrick kibble in third place is actually laughing quicker than the pair of them but he is about 12 and a half seconds or so for the uh class lead so we will cut to that if anything particularly interesting happens but right now hhc whilst the championship leading car is having a bit of a nightmare day the 58 car looks set to pick up maybe their first win of the year this is ollie wilkinson then fifth position i think optimum will be a little disappointed that they've when this is all shaken out they're down in fifth place because they could so easily have been up there fighting for their first win of the of the year yeah well did he defend too hard did he did he cost himself timing look at his pace he's 1.2 seconds quicker than the car engine that's tight yeah he's on better rubber that's as simple as that he stopped much later yeah and so that's cool i mean how far away is he from uh from the car ahead two and a half seconds that looks like a job done really isn't it yeah jack mitchell is struggling i think because they were earlier into the pit lane than the rest so those tires are being asked to uh to go further phil keane are starting this like 1.8 seconds behind michael o'brien in the first sector he was uh three 100 quicker than michael the middle sectors are just about to be completed now and let's see if that's not where he's quickest he's quicker two runs sector three yeah well he's two tenths more than two tenths about a quarter of a second quicker in sector two except the three uh definitely is where the lamborghini has always been strong he's got good change of direction good acceleration out the side corners there is the gap uh visually phil keane then he's not that far behind michael o'brien and i think give him another lap also he's gonna be right on the tail although that mistake yeah he missed the apex yeah that wasn't ideal was it we saw adam balon doing that before so if we always talk about how good the lamborghini is through the tight corners it doesn't seem to be stopping particularly well it's been giving him training quite possibly phil uh phil knows this place like the back of his hand he knows his car as well like the back of his hand phil key oh motorsport lamborghinis they just go together really well and wouldn't it be fitting if at this circuit of all circuits they could become the uh the first uh double winners of the year despite that mistake he was still quicker than michael in the second three and the overall lap was what four times almost quicker this is odd yeah absolutely uh almost mentioned the car 18 has been was on its fourth warning for track limits but before i had the chance to tell you about that it exceeded them again i've got given a drive-through penalty so car number 18 which is uh tenth place by the way after they brought out that one and only safety car we've had so far uh they uh marco mckelly in the car in tenth position they will lose that tenth place to joe osborne in the bath mode sport car he's back into his second and final stint now uh but they shouldn't fall much further back that critically though that will put them out to the point wpi at least by glide uh was fifth place in the championship so this is gonna cost him realistically you have to say a shot at the title this year there's confirmation on the screen of that uh penalty it's also on your screen more interestingly in a way battle for second place michael o'brien and phil keane second place look how much later the lamborghini was on the brakes yeah i was thinking i was i was interested to see which car stronger where and phil launched the car into the esses i mean it's already starting to have a look michael's not daft he knows that's not going to happen but it'd be interesting to see phil's just got so much more confidence at this stage of the race doesn't he i mean i think i'm right saying his tyres are younger than michael's aren't they yes michael's already done look he's defending early phil's chucked it he's going further beautiful i mean sorry that was absolute textbook but michael covered the line too early yeah and it slowed his entry well that's exactly the move that phil keith pulled on jack mitchell a lap or so earlier as well so that is his place that he's strong now if i was around racing i'd be telling patrick to gala okay first of all you got phil keem coming he is quicker than you he probably will catch you also defended to redgate corner because that's clearly well phil is feeling strong that lamborghini accelerates off godards really well puts him in the window to have a go on the brakes and then it's stopping really nicely uh into that first quarter as well and so phil keane there is the man he's chasing patrick cajala who goes past the uh 95 car that runs third in gt4 and is still no closer to the gt4 leaders than it was although jordan collard is now only one second ahead of jordan now but the top two in gt4 are closing together slightly but phil keane then the starting point is about eight and a half seconds that he's got to gain and he's got 13 minutes to do it touch and go this isn't it yeah it is i'm just trying to look where they are in terms of where's the strips we know how good that mercedes is sectors one and two we've seen it against the lamborghini earlier in the race and we know it was really really strong there so we're gonna have to wait and see again i think it's still around that three quarters of a second every lap that phil needs to win this as well to catch the leader uh yeah i'd say so we've probably got about eight laps to go i reckon over the course of that lap then phil keane was a tenth and a half quicker despite the overtake that he was having to make as well now again so this is uh something that's been bubbling away for the last half hour so i've been keeping an eye on the sro uh app which uh all the teams discuss various uh things on and they've been discussing cars 2 and 69 have been through investigating for a while for an incident that we don't really know what it was it's going to be investigated after the race now those who made contact at the very start of the race but it was decided by peter david mclaren of course no further action so either they've come together again since then or maybe an appeal has been launched or something by ram racing but either way past 2 and 69 the cars that run uh third and first respectively in this race an incident involving those two will be investigated after the race but what was introduced by sro the series organizer last year was a real time i guess real fun complete system yeah it's not been entirely in place before but you can now ride your rack again straight to race control that and that's clearly what's going on here either car 2 or car 69 i'm going to guess it's car 69 because uh well carl two rubber because they're behind 69. so they they've obviously gone into a major rant online and they're demanding the investigation yeah well we'll try we're going to try and ask raise control to find out get a bit more clarity on exactly what the incident in question is hopefully it doesn't put a shadow over the end of the race but uh for now we will focus on the gap which is coming down by a whopping three thousandths of a second so phil keem patrick essentially matching each other uh interestingly keen in the first sector was over a tenth quicker so it's the rest of the laps it's the middle sector really isn't it traffic there though are these the gt4 leaders that they're going past now jordan collard and jordan albert this gap between the hhc mclaren and the academy mustang keeps fluctuating between about one second and one and a half seconds it's changing lap by lap but uh i don't think jordan albert has enough pace that he's going to be able to close it on the mclaren unless uh jordan card makes a mistake 58 as i said looking for their first win of the year 69 in gt3 are also looking for their first victories and if 69 can hang on they will be the sixth different winner from six races i can't remember the first time we started the last time we started the season in that manner and honestly there are that many other cars out there that could win races i wouldn't be surprised if nobody manages to win two races this year as far as level of competition has been phil keano will want to make sure that doesn't happen how's he doing on this lap two and a bit tents quicker in the first second sector yeah that's where the mercedes is strong isn't it the fast sweeping corners that front-end mercedes just has the grip no actually sorry to correct you second sector so game on yes now we saw the traffic at the old head i think that's just about the start of the second sector isn't it that might explain it yeah you're right it was a 35 team for kajal and a 4 for key my mistake and now 7.4 seconds is the gap so it came down by 1.3 that time now if you can do that every time he can get there but how much of that was down to philippines pace and how much okay so what we're learning from this is that the barworld lamborghinis are ridiculously quick at the end of a three-hour race uh yes well that certainly seems to be the case sandy mitchell setting a personal best lap on the previous lap he wasn't the only one actually either matt anderson in the ultimate speed aston martin also set a personal best pretty impressive this late into the race tires obviously get changed in every pit stop track conditions deteriorate as more and more debris and rubbish gets uh strewn across the road so it's rare that we see the fastest laptop into the three-hour encounter which is now inside the final 10 minutes eight uh eight minutes and three quarters left on the clock on this lap again first sector keene is fractionally quicker second six though though he is slower so yeah uh and this time kajala is back in the 34s in the middle sector so it must have been the traffic lap again okay okay it's interesting every time i watch phil keene go into the melbourne hairpin i want to shut my eyes i don't know if you're watching watch it next lap he launches the thing in and the thing's virtually spinning on its axis it's amazing how much commitment he's got this is an important battle as well because uh this is warren hughes who has just got himself ahead of chris westmail chris westmeal in the 57th car was leading the championship coming into this race the toyota behind is a full lap ahead of these two and uh warren hughes in the in his return to competition former gt4 class champion in british gt is warren hughes and uh racing in the number 22 barbell car with jan uh clicked and uh the number 22 car which looks fantastic he's coming under a renewed pressure now from westmail he wants to try and get this place back this is basically the fight for um seventh place in gt4 you are more or less guaranteed to score points wherever you finish in gt4 but the further up you finish obviously the more you get at the hhc they need better than a seventh place finish really now he hasn't won hugh's done well i'm really proud of what he's done because he's flying the flag for us older drivers and there's you and hank he's a lot younger in the same car in the same team both in mclaren's both about and if you look at their pace even in qualifying it's less than one tenth between them and human lives in this thing juarez does i think his pace has been incredible he's about now sorry but i think he's 55 51 years old to have i know his experience but that raw pace is still there yeah exactly always been a quick drive though as warren first uh i've been aware of almost 20 years ago now as a mg driver in the british touring car championship for wsr and uh race winner there against some of the greats of touring car racing and then kind of turned his attention to gt racing as many professional racing drivers do it because gt racing is kind of the place to be and uh warren hughes uh great to have him back and i hope this is the last we see of him or jan all this level 22 valve mode support mclaren because it's a great addition great to have more gt4 cars uh appearing on track this year and uh not such great news for chris wesley who would much rather that 22 car hadn't turned up today because that would at least give him one more position but uh he's going to have to work this doesn't look as though warren is massively quicker than chris though it does it so uh chris does have a chance here being forced mistake out tomorrow and he might be able to get the place back i'd say what he's doing right now he's learning he's behind the master and honestly genuinely when he gets a chance to raise people like that you really do watch and learn and you find yourself almost not focusing on what you're doing but focus on what they're doing and you sort of go into some kind of parallel universe of where you're almost in the car with them genuinely he's got this is invaluable you can't buy this kind of learning experience i mean if i win i wouldn't overtake him i'd just follow the bloke well chris massmail i've mentioned this a few times this year that he has made that jump from club racing last year to gt racing at the highest level in the country and uh that is quite a jump to make and the fact that he's already got a race win and a couple of podiums after his belt and he's leading the championship uh is uh it is really really impressive the dpr motorsport car of marco papelli comes ahead of the field by the way you're not missing anything phil keane on the previous lap was actually fractionally slower than patrick yala kudala is doing a really sensational job here matching phil keane's lap time i mean keane is lapping a full second a lot quicker than michael o'brien and uh jack mitchell and ollie wilkinson behind and uh he's uh still not able to match patrick yala now joe osborne there i think did he just revive me out of compass corner if he did he could be in trouble because he's on his fourth warning already for track limits when you saw that flash up on our uh timing screen a moment or two ago but uh he is uh is he in a battle joe i was born though not really well he is racing marco vapelli who is a little way up the road and he's now got an exclamation point next to his name so i feel the next notification we will see is that joe osborne's being given a penalty for exceeding chart limits but uh they are outside of the points anyway and of course that car not a full season entrance and just looking at the lead again for the the the battle for the lead and kajala what's extraordinary the fastest lap they did was a 28 dead that guy this late in the race is lapping less than two tapes of their best faces how extraordinary whereas phil keaton who's still on it he's laughing at the same pace he's doing a 2082 as well but it's seven temps slower than what we know that car's capable of he's done at 27.5 earlier on on newer times but that mercedes looks after its brother that's what's taken into contention they can still laugh at their ultimate pace even if their ultimate pace isn't quite the level of the mclaren lamborghini and yet sandy mitchell in the other barbell car with the extra balance because it's a silver cup car they set their fastest lap of the race oh that's like 110th lap only four laps ago so yeah uh maybe oh well who knows we don't speculate but phil keane on that lap was actually a second quicker so the gaps back down to 6.3 but there's only three and a half minutes to go now so it looks as though ram racing are in the box seat here they have uh this car has had two podium finishes this year third place at alter park and a second place here in the two-hour race earlier on this season and they have a world finish mate so it's been a real it's been a championship campaign built on consistency rather than race wins but if you can have a consistent championship campaign and then win a race or two then you really are onto a winner yeah which way was that car facing the race yes that's not the right way not the right way and it's true i mean look i think this if this race gets won by them it'd be because of the first stint because he did a remarkable recovery job sam did an incredible recovery job i wonder ironically if he would have been as quick yes if he hadn't dropped it yeah yeah that that definitely gave him the incentive didn't it to kind of to fight back and uh and replay the lost time here so i thought coming joe osborne being in the 30-second post-race time penalty in lieu of a stop go penalty for exceeding track limits so joe osborne uh will not be uh particularly happy with that but uh he is as i said out of the points anyway only two seconds behind marco mapelli uh so he could have got back into the top ten but that now won't happen oh traffic here for the leader yeah if we just had another 10 or 15 minutes ago he might have gone for that but i think he knows that he doesn't need to do anything silly here phil queen is 5.8 seconds back he took another half a second out of him on the previous lap and in the first sector this time another three tenths the middle sector you imagine uh will have been affected by that traffic as well but i think he could afford to be a bit more cautious there in the traffic there will only be one more lap to go after this one yeah you know you can never be conservative i always remember a great piece of advice i got from my old teammate mike roberts it's not over till it's over and i remember vividly racing the time i was on the last lap i thought i was gonna win a batman got in the way and i came first and you must keep battling until the last second and only when you cross the line maybe before the last corner can you afford to relax yeah that's uh with this amount of traffic to deal with this is certainly not over yet although kajala uh has now cleared the uh warren hughes and so chris westmail uh scrap so he now should have clear air pretty much to the flag whereas phil keane is going to have to negotiate those two on the run into redgate corner probably he's going to catch them three goddards and then try to get them into terms of one out of the final turn he goes one minute left on the clock and uh the sixth round of the intelligent money british gt championship has been a a strategically fascinating race and it is all gonna come down to the very last lap or so it's not gonna be a massive winning margin this for either of these two but i think patrick ajala he was 3.4 seconds ahead going on to the final lap of the race he lost two and a half seconds slower on the previous lap we know traffic had a lot to do with that uh and i don't think there was too much more of that up the road behind them by the way michael o'brien only 1.6 seconds ahead of jack mitchell and sandy mitchell has put in a really great stint here we haven't really been able to mention him enough because he came out of the pit lane about 15 seconds behind on he will can see he's only five seconds behind him now but again sadly he's just gonna run out of time i think to actually uh do anything about it well they had a 20-second success penalty and he's only 23 seconds off the off the leader so i guess we can conclude that they would have been in the round in fact the battle between them and keen adam would be be split by by by a chinese i mean less than a second yeah that's true but that shows that that success penalty has done its job yeah uh for the 117th time then in this fantastic sixth round of the championship patrick yala is bringing the number 69 ram racing mercedes into the final corner and this time around he will see the checkered flag it is a sixth different race winner in gt3 from as many races and rap racing take the victory here at donington park and with it they will close right in on the championship lead phil keane brings the ball while lamborghini hopes second on that on to the strategy that they were running right from the start of the race uh but it is celebrations all round at brown racing third place goes to michael o'brien another podium result for the jensen team rocket rjn mclaren and they just about fed off the two seas motorsport mclaren and jack mitchell who are fourth place uh fifth position for ollie wilkinson sixth for sandy mitchell and rob collard the winners last time out so i'll work out the points at the moment but they're definitely going to lose some points obviously to the ram car that was second in the championship in gt4 it looks as though it is going to be uh hhc motorsport who come out on top here on a bit of traffic here for the leader to deal with right at the end of the race that is the uh david whitney kowski driven bmw uh which is not making life too easy for jordan collard but jordan collard he's going to bring the number 58 card that he shares with patrick mattiason across the start finish line as a first-time winner in the championship this year their first victory of the season second place goes to the winners last time at brands hatch academy motorsport and third position just coming out of the final corner is the 95 aston martin and that will be redemption for what happened at brandt's hatch because they were fighting for third place then when they got nerfed off into the gravel and it's 95's conor o'brien and patrick kibble who come home third place in gt4 and just like that three hours is over i mean that was a fascinating race and it was one of those races where you really didn't know what the outcome was going to be until right at the end and i'm really really happy for ram racing because this has been a long time coming yeah and jeff kingston who runs that car will be his first gt football free win so well done to him but look i'm just trying to work out what did we just learn from that race well we learned that the mustang in gt4 which is only finished let's just over a second behind the leader we've learned that thing is quick because he had a big success penalty from winning last time out so that car is on the song they're going to have another penalty a a snack next time around aren't they but yeah that car's quick we will also learn what we already knew that the mercedes is kind on his tyres and the mclaren isn't kind on his tyres and we also learned that adam balon can go head-to-head with semi-professional race drivers and actually he's quick enough to get the car into second place come on let's give the guys some credit here oh yeah they don't get any benefit other than a bit less weight in the car and the blokes brought it home in second place yeah absolutely it was a good result that far while motorsport but it's ram racing that take the race victory sandahan and patrick yala with their first win of the year their first one together as well of course adam balum and phil keane come home in second place and score some valuable points they're very much still in contention with that result whilst michael o'brien and james baldwin the same can be said of them in third john witt and jack mitchell for two season four with ollie wilkinson and louis proctor maybe a slightly disappointing fifth place in the end but it's still a decent points hall for them with rob collard and sandy mitchell the championship leaders in sixth position like i said i'll break out the abacus in a moment i'm trying to work out if they still are the championship needs it's gonna be tight uh the audi of uh centerfield simon fielding and richard williams are seventh with richard and sam neary eight for team ava racing yelmer bourbon and ian logging in the ram racing car that uh had a penalty come home next in uh ninth place with marco mapelli and mike igor rounding out the top ten in gt4 it is uh dean mcdonnell uh notes notice john colhard and patrick mathiason uh who take the victory for hht motorsport is academy both sports jordan albert and matt cowley who are second with patrick kibble and connor o'brien third for tf sport jamie caroline and dan vaughn in the sister car are four so they won't have any success penalty to servants letter to next time you and hanky and mia flew it are next the uh one of uh two pro-am cars in the field and it's sam smelton james kell in the speedworks car they had quite a quiet run in the end to a sixth in class young klingelberg and warren hughes on their first appearance in the championship this year uh are next ahead of cospowers and chris westmale in the 57 car and then those that have problems david whitmore and luke sejkovsky in the bmw pulled off with a mechanical issue midway through the race ben hurston adam hatfield in the pit lane early on and of course scott malvin and nick jones uh only completed 55 off 117 laps apologies for the language there but they're actually just arguing about contact so uh i just heard i think i just heard phil king say that you're going to get a penalty for contact and now i'm ear winking here which is why i'm not talking because i thought there might be some interesting discussions after the race but uh yeah i'm trying to figure out why phil keane would be annoyed at patrick cajala because they were never actually anywhere near each other in the stitch so that's interesting uh we know that number two and 69 are under investigation after the race but i haven't yet seen michael o'brien or james baldwin go over there to uh to have a word said did phil see something happen did he see contact and that's what he's talking about i'm sure i heard him say that i'm sure he said you're gonna give up some colorful language so that there was a penalty coming his way okay well we'll uh give you news on that as and when we get it but for now no use of a penalty so number 69 patrick kunjala and sam dahan are your race winners in gc3 and gt4 is hhc motorsports and that means that both of the hhc cars now have won a race this year both times at donington park so this is becoming a happy hunting ground for them and we will momentarily be able to head down and have a word with uh patrick and sam and the mercedes uh crew become the six different winners of the season and uh yeah that's uh that points margin that the barbell 78 car had is definitely going to be reduced now as a result of that because they came home all the way down in sixth position so let's see patrick cajala just being summoned over to the interview area and this uh well we'll see if maybe they can shed any light on what that conversation was with phil keane who's quite happy laughing and joking now with uh sam duhan who could really rather do with getting over to the uh to the podium area there i'll be affluent in you in hanky you win the pro am category in gt4 they actually had some competition uh this time around as well didn't they yeah they did i have to say i'm quite impressed you know what have they finished is that fourth overall overall yeah not bad at all they've had a few good results including an overall gt4 win this year of course the overall winners here at doddington park though are ram racing patrick ajala and sam to ham become the sixth different winners of the year yeah absolutely six different winners of the year and what a phenomenal race that was patrick coming down to three seconds at the end being pushed by phil and his guys no not push at all everything under control to be honest so it might look from tv like that but i was not worried at all so you felt it was totally in control you were able to manage the gap yes no problem at all and for yourself then sam looking on from the side there trying to work out what was going on did you get nervous at any stage no not really i think it's just you know quite an emotional race coming from last place after getting tagged at the first corner to come back we i think we had a really clean race other than that our stints are really good the pit stops are great can't complain i think a perfect race for us really well fantastic thanks very much let's weld on to you thank you yeah yeah congratulations then to ram racing who i mean they they were alluding to it there graham they spun at that very first corner and did an incredible job to fight back not a podium would have been a great result after that let alone a race victory yeah you don't often face the wrong way at the start of a race and end up winning and look they did it on pure pace that was just pure speed from sandahan in the first in absolute extraordinary uh yeah so uh the conversation then continues between those two patrick goodyear not a man of many words but uh i'm sure he is happy uh with the uh with the result that they have just picked up right let's head down to bryn then who i believe has got our gt4 winners it's jordan collard and patrick matthias for the first time this year on the top step of the podium yeah and i think these two are a little bit happier than patrick scene just there but patrick went on to you jordan as well fantastic race yeah thank you thank you yeah well john did an amazing job in here in the end i really pushed the car right to the limits um and yeah the strategy went with us today so really happy now for yourself then jordan when you were in the car at the very very end you had the academy guys chasing you down two and a half seconds any concern at any stage i think for about an hour straight there was concern to be honest uh no they were really quick today as well they've done a very good car so yeah i know like i said it was just a case of being consistent the mclaren is a really reliable car so i know i could get it to the end uh and then yeah just like i said ticking over each lap and obviously managing the gt3 traffic isn't easy so i had him in front of me for the whole of my first in and then luckily behind me for the last one which is good so fantastic how did you sum up that race then in three words get me home exactly well done jess great win brilliant answer well there you go then gt4 victory goes to the hhc motorsport squad i've just been doing the points in gt3 by the way it does look like ram racing have just taken the championship lead with that race victory uh and it's all starting to tighten up at the front of the field with barwell's other car coming into contention now as well uh and according gt4 academy doing exactly the same thing they came into this race only 11 points off the championship leader who did not score very well in that race so academy we can't really discount them now as one of uh yeah one of two teams to have won more than once this year onto the podium though go uh james baldwin and michael o'brien who managed to come home third place overall and uh second place of course in the silver cup in this race there are separate championships for the pro-am championship and the silver cup as well and even am championship too for the uh odd entry that we get in that category but it's the overall championship that these two are targeting same of course true of phil keane and adam balon who feel that they are owned really after last year and they composed second place it was a valiant charge from phil keane to try and close in on the race leader at the end of that race but it just wasn't quite meant to be in the end ram racing held on and it's sandahan and patrick kayala who win the sixth round of the intelligent money british gt championship here from donington park and uh i assure you they're smiling under those maps but it's patrick always this laid back he doesn't seem to be a particularly emotive person does he yeah i mean to take the trophy he doesn't want her either indeed then we go to our pro-am podium and it looks as though ian logging and the albert berman make their way up onto the podium after a third place finish in pro am in gt3 this is of course they'll be ruining that penalty they had uh some dramas here last time we visited donington park as well with a couple of spins out on track and uh it's a shame because they were quick all weekend long in practice and qualifying they come home third in pro am though second place for the nearest richard and sam who continue to impress they're not maybe making the headlines for overall race results but they are still doing a really good job within the uh the pro am championship and indeed coming into uh this weekend they were right up there fourth place in the pro championship uh coming into darlington park it is of course phil keane and adam balon though who win in pro am they missed out on the overall race victory by only a few seconds but they do at least take maximum points from the uh pro am element of the championship and uh they arrived here just behind ram racing z and log in yelmer bourbon in the pro-am category two points wise so they'll have closed in as a result of that then we go to gt4 and it's tf sport who are third place and uh conor o'brien and patrick kibble third place overall in gt4 good points for them the team that arrived here third in the championship but they have managed to outscore both of the teams in front of them they were only five points off the championship lead as well so they will be back in front now as we head to snetterton second place for the team that won at brands hatch last time out matt cowley and jordan albert another really solid drive from that team they're coming into their stride now as we go into the second half of the year and that is the perfect time to be doing that and they finish second place another really really good result for them the window in gt4 for the first time this year goes to the number 58 hhc motorsport mclaren of jordan collard and patrick mathiason and that is only their their second appearance on the podium this year which more than makes up for the non-finish at brands hatch last time out and you know what they were only 22 and a half points off the championship lead as well which we're gonna get to silverstone at the end of the year and every gt40 more or less it's gonna be in contention i think for the championship it is a smaller entry maybe than we're used to in gt4 this year but still a very very competitive one both motorsport victorious in pro-am they were guaranteed to be victorious in pro-am but it was just a case of which of their driver lineups would get it was mia flew it and you and hanky though who took the victory in maintaining their broke unbroken run of uh pro-am gt4 race victories although it was nice for them i'm sure to have a little bit of competition out there on the track today which they haven't necessarily had throughout the rest of the year and in the category in gt4 uh luke sajkowski and david whitmore in the century motorsport to giwa bmw are the only or am entry they came back though after their problems that they had mid-race and were able to uh to take the victory some great story lines there great i mean the the gt3 battle gets a lot of the uh attention during race but that gt4 championship is extremely finely poised uh with just three races to go yeah so sorry this is reminding me of my daughter's uh sports day everyone gets a trophy right now i'm gonna go and get mine in a minute but yeah i mean really really close in gt4 the grid is small but the racing is really good quality and the championship's absolutely wide open but i think it's wide open in gt3 i do and what i love watching is the pro-ams taking it to the silver silver pairings that there's no advantage in the pit stop it's done on pure speed i have to say as a bronze driver i'm really proud of what they're achieving patrick kibble and phil keane they're getting the fastest lap awards because they were the fastest individual drivers in both gt3 and gt4 and uh that concludes the podium ceremony in inverted commerce it's all slightly strange this year with social distancing and whatnot but still nice that they get their moment to collect the trophies and uh as happy as they are with those trophies i think it's the points that most of those teams are particularly happy to receive so that was round number six of the intelligent money british gt championship it's been a fantastic three hours of racing be sure to join us next time at snetterton thank you very much to graham johnson for joining me up here in the box thanks for your company everyone we'll see you again next time [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to donington park and the brdc british formula 3 championship here in the uh stunning autumn sunshine the brand's hat the donington park crop free circuit excuse me uh has been producing some great racing this weekend in the british formula 3 championship and race 3 of the weekend should be no difference at all we've had two different winners from our first two races can we get a third in this one well the start will be all important we'll have to be able to take a look at the grid in a moment or two we're getting notified that maybe a delayed start to this race so uh i'm not sure if someone has maybe gone missing on the green flag lap but the bulk of the field are making their way around the melbourne hairpin and it's caleb frederick uh that had uh the race win yesterday and uh the uh he is back on pole position again now in race number three he has cush mainly alongside him and uh eunice power and sassacorn charming car will be right behind him on row number two then it's nazi mazman and bart horsten on row three reese ushima and ben pederson on row four ahead of kian jewish and louis foster rounding out the top ten and it's ollie clark and frank byrd manafujawi and josh skelton pierce pryor roberto farrier making his debut in the championship josh mason and alex fours rounding out the field and that i'm afraid is manafuja who was one of the stars of race number two a little bit earlier on got himself a podium his first ever podium in the championship in race two but sadly he's off the road at the top of the grain of curves and this is the reason for the uh delayed start so they are going to have another green flag like presumably in a moment or two there's a notification from race control that the stars has been delayed which gives me a bit of time to talk about what's been going on so far uh this weekend as i said we've had two races already the first of which was yesterday won by caleb frederick with elise powell second and cush mainly the championship leader in third position the big story there really was that there was some contact in the early stages between uh kian jewish and uh josh lee foster and jews ended up with damaged front left suspension uh frank byrd went off the road as well to avoid the frank also making his first appearance of the season this weekend and uh that was significant because kian jewish was third in the championship coming into the weekend a second attack coming into the weekend third place now um and louis foster also has delayed in that and he was up there for the championship so a few of our championship contenders uh running into difficulty as we see the grid again now going through the bottom of your screen caitlyn frederick on pole position and alongside him cush mainly then you

Channel: THE RACE

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Length: 219min 34sec (13174 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020