How a BTCC veteran conquered the summit in British GT

By:

James Newbold

Dec 17, 2020, 4:03 PM

After two decades in touring cars, Rob Collard had an uphill battle to unlearn the tools needed to be quick in tin-tops and understand how to hustle a GT3 car. But he did so with aplomb to prevail alongside Sandy Mitchell amid a challenging year for the series

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It's been an unusual year for British GT. Action was delayed until August by the pandemic, and the grid had dropped from 35 paid-up entries to 21 when it got under way. As series promoter Stephane Ratel put it, "when you lose 40% of your grid, you can't call it a success". But, as Ratel rightly added, "it's been a sporting success".

There were seven different winners from four manufacturers over the nine races, and four crews remained in title contention until the Silverstone finale, which drew an encouraging 37-car field. There, the Barwell-versus-RAM fight was decided in favour of Sandy Mitchell and British Touring Car Championship convert Rob Collard, becoming the first and, likely, last Silver Cup duo to make the grade before such pairings are outlawed next year.

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James Newbold Autosport Plus Editor

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James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.