Kinch and Kirkaldy Take Wet British GT Win at Silverstone

08 October 2005

The domination of the British GT Championship by Nathan Kinch and Andrew Kirkaldy continues; the Scuderia Ecosse pair have qualified on pole position for all thirteen races of the season. They completed the clean sweep by being fastest in both 15-minute qualifying sessions on the Silverstone International circuit.

Starting from pole gave Nathan Kinch and Andrew Kirkaldy an important advantage, allowing them to break free of the spray and take a decisive lead in the first race of the weekend. The rain which had threatened all day arrived an hour before the race got under way; at the start the track was thoroughly wet, with a steady drizzle falling. Conditions worsened as the rain increased through the race.

Kinch and Kirkaldy have won all but two races this year - and both of those losses came in wet conditions. Today was a different story as they were never threatened; Kinch made the most of starting from pole, pulling away at almost a second a lap with the benefit of a clear track and no spray. Behind him Cunningham, in the Embassy Racing Porsche, was able to pull a few seconds clear of the pursuing cars; initially this was the Eurotech Porsche of Jordan, but Niarchos soon moved the second Scuderia Ecosse car into third.

Positions remained static up to the mandatory pit-stops; the stops themselves were relatively untroubled for the front-runners, but Cunningham made a crucial mistake, coming in just after the pit-stop 'window' had closed. That meant that Collins was called in for a 10s stop-go penalty, which was enough to let Mullen, team-mate of Niarchos, take second.

At the front Kirkaldy took over from Kinch and cruised to the finish. His job was made easier by a safety car period after a Porsche had slid off on the back straight, only to hit another Porsche which had earlier spun off and been parked; the collision left one car on the track. When the safety car pulled in there were just two laps remaining of the one-hour race, but no one was able to take advantage of the restart in thoroughly atrocious conditions, the race finishing in the gloom of early evening.

Nathan Kinch said, "Starting from pole in the wet is a real advantage, because you don't have the spray affecting visibility. I made a good start and kept the lead until the pit-stops - it was pretty uneventful, really."

GT3 was rather more incident-packed; the class had four different leaders, and incidents accounted for several front-runners - notably the nr 20 Trackspeed Porsche, which led coming into the pit-stops; Ashburton handed over the car to Moss, who slid off and out of the race on his first lap. That left the nr 9 Tech 9 Porsche of McKellar Jr and Murphy in the lead, which they held to the finish. They came home just 0.8s ahead of the leading Invitation entry, the nr 30 Team Parker Racing pairing of Rich and Westwood. Second GT3 car was the nr 96 Motorbase Quaife Porsche of Moseley and Quaife, who had led the race in the early stages; they finished just under 8s clear of the nr 23 Motorbase Performance Porsche of Britnell and Falkner.

Ian McKellar Jr said, "I've been away from GT racing for four years; I was struggling with front-end grip in the dry, so the rain played into my hands today. We had a great start, and James brought the car home safely."

Team mate James commented, "I couldn't ask for a better team-mate than Ian. Hopefully we can race together in the future. The rain definitely played into our hands as we were off the pace in the dry, but that's racing. The team did a mega job, too."

SRO

See 2005 series calendar for British GT Championship

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