British GT Championship – Castle Combe
Cup Class

The win in the Cup Class was almost never in doubt, Pat Pearce and Matt Griffin in charge in the #76 Porsche and facing no real challenge from the rest of the field as they scored their fifth victory of the season. Problems for several cars allowed Nick Staveley and Steve Moore in the sister #78 GruppeM Tech 9 Porsche to haul back time lost to an early ‘off’.

Nick Stavely could barely believe the result: “I’m amazed we’re second, I was dead last on lap 4, this car is fantastic.”

Pat Pearce: “I got my head down and found I could pull away quite easily here, we had a good race set-up and it fell right for us, I’m delighted.”

Matt Griffin: “I was pleased we had a gap to defend, I had a big vibration for the last few laps but we brought it home.”

Behind them is was a story of “What might have been.”

Paul Whight had been a revelation all weekend in the #55 RML Lotus Elise, and he was very competitive throughout the red-flag interrupted race, dicing with Porsches, VWs, Morgans or anything else which crossed his path. An alternator failure in the dying laps though cost him a deserved podium slot. His best lap time split those of the Porsches, second fastest in the class.

Another car showing raw pace was the controversial but popular GulfAir sponsored VW Golf GTI Turbo. A power upgrade (now almost 300bhp) has added pace to the beautifully prepared Golf and it was a regular feature in the top three throughout. It finally succumbed however to gearbox woes, but was classified seventh. They’ll be back however, and these guys mean business!

Neil Cunningham is the usual Porsche Baiter General in his #66 Richard Thorne Morgan Aero 8. He took over the car from new driving partner Paula Cook during the melee following the accident for the #23 TVR, but just couldn’t challenge this time. A front suspension problem finally ended the day for the Aero 8.

Several other runners, notably the ISL Marcos Mantis squad, felt that the grid for the restarted race had done them a disservice but in the final analysis the record will show that third place was taken by two newcomers to the series. Patrick Charlton and his father Marc were barely able to believe their good fortune, in putting the Team Wireless Honda-engined Lotus Elise on the podium.

“Frankly we were hoping to get some luck and bring the car to the finish – third place is absolutely fantastic,” said Marc Charlton. “How the heck did that happen? What a great call from our pit crew to bring us in when they did, that gave us a huge advantage over several others – Wow!”

The Glenvarigill Ferrari was classified fourth, Alun Edwards and Jeff Wyatt fifth and the Scuderia Grifo Corse Lotus sixth, its most competitive outing of the season so far.
GG