Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam claim British GT title in Aston Martin

Howard and Adam had trailed Marco Attard and Alexander Sims by two points heading into the Donington decider, but the Ecurie Ecosse BMW drivers failed to finish the race after Attard was involved with a crash with the Beechdean GT4 car being driven by Jamie Chadwick.

The crash occurred at the Melbourne hairpin on lap 15 as Attard attempted to lap Chadwick. The two cars came together at the apex of the corner and both were forced to retire as a result.

That meant Howard and Adam just needed to finish the race higher than ninth to claim the title and Adam brought the #007 Beechdean Aston Martin home safely in the second half of the race.

Speaking after the race, factory Aston Martin driver Adam said: "The race was good, nice and clean all the way through with no issues. The team told me before I got in the car where I had to finish.

"I'm really happy for Andrew and his family, so to win that for him and the team is cool.

"On a personal note, it's nice to win the title, officially I never got it two years ago [when Howard also won the GT3 title].

"It's also nice to see a customer happy and it just shows that the Aston Martin GT3 is still a good car."

Speaking about the crash that eliminated Attard and Sims, Howard said: "Jamie has got the most fantastic integrity and she is absolutely devastated.

"For a kid who's just won the [GT4] championship she is absolutely devastated because there's no way she'd have done it on purpose and there's no way we would do it.

"I think it's a shame [the title was decided by a crash], because from our point of view Alexander Sims and Jonny have been close all season and Marco and I have been close all season."

Howard explained that after winning his second British GT title he will be moving up to the European Le Mans Series later this year before attempting to race at the Le Mans 24 Hours in the future.

"We're doing Estoril ELMS in October and we'll announce our driver line-up for that at the end of this week," he said.

"But my intention has [always] been to do Le Mans and I'm getting too old now not to start having a go.

"From a driver point of view, I want to drive at the highest level I can."

The two-hour Donington race was won by Matt Bell and Derek Johnston in the TF Sport Aston Martin, ahead of the sister car of Andrew Jarman and Jody Fannin. Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen completed the podium for Barwell Motorsport.