Scuderia Ecosse Dominate Qualifying for British GT Championship Opener

02 April 2005

Scuderia Ecosse dominated the first qualifying of the 2005 season of the British GT Championship, securing the front row for tomorrow's two-hour race.

The number 35 Ferrari 360, driven by Andrew Kirkaldy in the qualifying session, set the fastest time, with a lap of 1:07.710. From the start of the session, both Ferrari cars entered by the Scottish team underlined their good pre-season testing times, battling it out with Team Eurotech's Mike Jordan in the Porsche 911 GT3-RSR and the TVR T400 R of Lawrence Tomlinson. Kirkaldy was very happy after the qualifying. "We hoped to be on pole, so we're pretty happy. I don't think we got the time we maybe could have done, but then everyone else is probably the same. It warmed up a lot," Kirkaldy said afterwards, "We'd only run in the cool previously, when we did a 1min 7.0 with a heavy load of fuel, I'd imagine we could go quicker. We had a slight imbalance in the car in qualifying but we did enough and as long as the car is good for the race that's the main thing."

Kirkaldy's team-mate Tim Mullen set a lap time of 1:08.316, which secured the second spot on the grid for the second Scuderia Ecosse team, despite not knowing what to expect of the car due to small changes to the set-up during the free practise session. "I'd like to have had more track time this morning as bot myself and Chris are new to this car," Mullen commented, "Both the track and the car felt a little different to the test on Thursday so I didn't do the time I wanted to do. But we are comfortably second, which I think is as good as we were going to be after this morning."

Mike Jordan set the third quickest lap in his Porsche 911 GT3-RSR. Driving alongside team-mate Michael Caine in tomorrow's long distance race, he said: "I'm very pleased because we knew this would be a track that suited the Ferrari. Our aim was third as we didn't think we could challenge the Ferraris, so I am really delighted to be as close as we are. The car has been fantastic the whole time here so I'm really looking forward to the race."

Team Quaife secured pole position in the GT3 category with a time of 1:11.946. Just 0.005 seconds behind, Team Parker Racing set the second fastest lap. To complete the top three, late-entry Tech 9 set a time of 1:11.965 with their Porsche 911 GT3 Cup All top three teams run with the same car, a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.

SRO

Images from this event are now available here.

See 2005 series calendar for British GT Championship

Related Story 22.03.2005 - British GT Championship Boasts Strongest Grid for Years