For Shaun Balfe there was a modest improvement of a tenth of a second: “The car responds very quickly to new tyres, and I was right on the pace straight away.” That translated into a first flying lap of 1:41.9, four seconds quicker than anyone else’s first lap, and then a 41.3, a lap delayed in traffic, and finally the pole lap of 1:40.895. No one headed Balfe throughout.

The team had agreed to tape over some holes that had been drilled in the rear panel (with the Chief Scrutineer’s approval) to aid cooling, as there remains an agreement that the Moslers are not developed to give a performance gain.

The other Mosler? “We’ve been on the back foot from the start of the meeting,” said M. Short. “We lost an ECU yesterday, which cost us all of the first session and half the second, and we’re still miles away on set-up. We’ll be scratching our heads tonight, to work out a better set-up.” Rollcentre’s qualifying session was also hampered by a l/rear suspension ball joint developing some play “on the second lap.” Fourth fastest was the result.

Second was no surprise: Piers Johnson in the Eclipse TVR. “We had more understeer than this morning, so I came in for an adjustment, and we went the wrong way – but at least we know which way to go now!” Johnson was very confident for the race.

Third was a surprise (or maybe not). Aaron Scott had the Ultima going like never before. “We had a minor problem yesterday, but for the first time we’ve been able to get on and make the car go faster, rather than worry about fixing it.” After the session, the team seemed to be wondering what to do next. No job list!

Steve Hyde was fifth for CDL and their Tuscan, Peter Le Bas found three tenths from this morning and was sixth, and Phil Hindley was seventh, noticeably slower than this morning. Bob Berridge had to spin the car towards the end of the session, to miss an Elise, and with the Porsche in a dangerous position, the session was red flagged a few minutes early.

Marco Attard was a good eighth in the ex-MSB Ferrari – and the two slowest cars in ‘this class’ were both actually classed as GT Class cars: that was the Peter Cook Porsche and the Richard Jones F40. Cook was so fed up with the handling of his 996, he asked to run a bigger wing and wider rears (and therefore move up a class), but actually went slower.

It was another dominant performance from the Cup class leading #76 GruppeM Tech 9 Porsche which put paid to any possible challenge for class pole. Matt Griffin was finding the understeering Porsche very much to his liking and was seemingly able to find two tenths on every flying lap, whereas the chasing pack could only pluck out half that much. A 1:45.473 would be enough for pole and for 9th spot overall on the grid. A well sorted Porsche is evidently the car to have here.

Behind Griffin, Neil Cunningham was hammering away as usual in the #66 Richard Thorne Motorsport Morgan Aero 8. But he would end up more than a second shy of the Porsche’s mark by the end of the session.

Third up was Hector Lester in the Glenvarigill Ferrari 360, the car sporting large roof vinyls for John Chapter 3: Verse 16 “It’s our Christian message for the world,” explained the affable Mr Lester. Amen to that Hector. His efforts were good enough this afternoon to put considerable distance between his 360 and the second #46 Morgan.

Behind all of these was the second Tech 9 Porsche, the #78 car clearly struggling “We’re normally within a second of the #76 car,” said a frustrated Nick Staveley, “but we’ve had problems all weekend. We thought at first it was a tyre problem but we know now we have been down on power.”

Alongside Staveley this weekend is Championship newcomer Liz Halliday. She was revelling in the step up to the British GT Championship, but equally frustrated at the elusive problem: “ In fact the car getting worse has helped us, what had been a fairly indefinable flat spot has now become a misfire, the engine is really popping and banging. At least now we can more easily trace the problem and the team can fix it.”

Behind all of these came the battle of the Elises. There was great relief all round when Vincenzo Sospiri emerged from the pitlane, the Brunswick Motorsport squad having executed a fix for the fuel rail fracture this morning.

Indeed it was the ex-F1 man that took the battle to the other pair of Elises: his attack was however blunted early on when the engine cover came loose, trailing wildly but secured by the quick release pins on the trailing edge.

The father and son Team Wireless pairing were left frustrated with “header issues and a flexijoint failure”. A lack of track time here for both Charlton Jnr and Snr also told. “I’ve done very little racing here, although last season I raced the car with a K-Series engine. It blew up and caught fire: that’s one of the reasons we have gone the Honda route this season.”

Can the championship leaders maintain their advantage tomorrow? Or will the chasing pack overcome a raft of mechanical and set-up niggles to take up the chase. With glorious weather expected tomorrow, why not come down to the prettiest circuit in the UK and find out?
GG & MC