The Lamborghini teams plotting to stop a RAM raid on British GT

After a season-long duel between its two Lamborghinis and the two RAM Racing Mercedes in 2020, Barwell Motorsport finally broke the Italian marque’s British GT hoodoo by taking home the outright drivers’ and teams’ titles. But it wasn’t victorious on all fronts.

Honours in the Pro-Am division went to Dan Shufflebottom’s Merc squad, and that takes on a bigger significance this year, with the Silver pairings that dominated last year now banned. Yelmer Buurman and Ian Loggie didn’t win a race outright last year, but their Pro-Am title-winning campaign had fewer troughs than that of Barwell rivals Phil Keen and Adam Balon, who were twice overall winners.

Buurman and Loggie were helped somewhat when team-mate Sam De Haan hit Balon into a spin in the Silverstone finale, but that day also marked Loggie’s seasonal high point as he battled outright champion Rob Collard’s Barwell Lambo for the race lead en route to second.

Starting with this weekend’s 2021 opener at Brands Hatch, Buurman and Loggie will hope to parlay that Pro-Am crown into outright success, but they face familiar opposition seeking to stop them in the shape of three strong Lamborghinis from Barwell and WPI Motorsport.

Familiar, yes, but also slightly different. After six years under the Barwell awning, series standout Keen has joined Michael Igoe’s ambitious single-car WPI squad, which also welcomes ex-Barwell engineer Andy Richardson to the fold. That cements the credentials of a team that only made its British GT debut in 2019 with a Carrera Cup Porsche. Over at Barwell, meanwhile, Balon is now partnered by Collard’s 2020 co-champion Sandy Mitchell.

Michael Igoe, Andrea Caldarelli (WPI) lead Adam Balon, Phil Keen (Barwell) at Donington in 2020

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Mitchell, 21, has been promoted to full Lamborghini factory status after his 2020 successes, which included winning the Silver class at the Spa 24 Hours. He keeps his engineer from last year, Matt Beers, but in Balon has a very different challenge to that posed by working with Collard.

While the tin-top veteran was totally new to GT racing, he needed little advice when it came to racecraft. On the other hand, Balon has two years of Huracan experience under his belt, but finished last year low on confidence, which Barwell’s pre-season test programme set out to address.

Team boss Mark Lemmer admits that Barwell “didn’t get the best out of Adam at the end of last year”, but reckons his new partnership with Mitchell is already showing potential.

"The combination is really working and I have no doubt they’ll be in the mix from the word go" Mark Lemmer

“The set-up we ended up with for Adam and Keeny made it a difficult car for Adam to drive, but luckily what he and Sandy want from the car is more aligned and he’s got a car he feels he can really attack with,” says Lemmer.

“He’s in such a different place. Adam was really keen to get back to Silverstone and he went 1.5s per lap faster than in quali at the end of last year. The combination is really working and I have no doubt they’ll be in the mix from the word go.”

The second car will be occupied by Barwell stalwart Leo Machitski, returning for a first full season in British GT since his 2006 title year alongside rapid Dane Dennis Lind, who shone in a part-season with WPI in 2019. Machitski, after winning 2018 and 2019 GT World Challenge Europe Am class titles, had his desire to have another crack at the old-school UK tracks sparked by the continental series’ visit to Imola last year. He has ex-WRT man Charles Hodge in his camp on engineering duties and, according to Lemmer, confidence is not something the crew will lack.

“Leo is super-confident,” says Lemmer. “We know there’s a learning curve for him, but he’s a fast learner. When Dennis became available, we jumped on that and we’re very lucky to have two pairings that are going to challenge.”

Adam Balon, Sandy Mitchell (Barwell Lamborghini) GT Cup Brands Hatch 2021

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With opportunities to test on the full Brands GP loop limited, both Barwell cars were among the smattering of British GT entrants on the grid for the GT Cup race there earlier this month. Lemmer says the outing “really achieved the objectives” of building confidence and familiarity. WPI also contested that event, and Igoe, despite being stranded in the pits for race one due to “some freak things”, heads into the new season on a high.

“We’re glad for [the technical issues] to happen there and hopefully now those problems are out of the way,” he says. “We’ve worked hard, and Phil has fitted in really well. He’s a big asset to the team and we’ve learned lots, so we’re moving forward at quite a rate of knots.”

After learning the ropes in 2019, Igoe emerged as a race winner at Donington last year alongside Andrea Caldarelli, but he found the revolving door of Lambo factory drivers alongside him (four in total) didn’t help with continuity. “There was no two weekends we had the same driver,” he says.

Igoe admits that Keen’s presence in the team brings pressure – “When you’re comparing yourself to him, you’re comparing yourself to the best” – but with a winter of testing under his belt is optimistic “it’s going in the right direction”.

“WPI Motorsport is a very new team, especially at this level against teams that have been around the championship for years,” says Igoe. “So for us to come as a small team and to get everybody going in the right direction without missing anything along the way is quite a big ask, but we are definitely getting there.”

Lemmer, who has run the Huracan since 2016, points out that the Lambo is “a cost-effective package” and benefits from “a brilliant level of support, especially for some of these new teams coming in”. But while Lamborghini has numerical superiority – a fourth car from Simon Green Motorsport is entered in the fledgling Silver-Am sub-class – that doesn’t mean it will translate onto the track, where the less aero-dependent Mercedes has often proven the most Am-friendly package.

Michael Igoe (WPI Motorsport)

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As for RAM, a second car will be entered at selected events starting at Brands this weekend, with De Haan joined by Bronze graded historics racer James Cottingham. At races where the team is only running one car, more focus will inevitably be drawn onto Buurman and Loggie – “I think it’s probably a positive thing for them,” concedes Shufflebottom – who retain the services of Portugal-based engineering whizz Alex Zochling.

With the overall title now at stake, Shufflebottom reckons it will make a “huge difference” to RAM’s drivers, but also ups the incentive for all parties to deliver.

"For us to come as a small team and to get everybody going in the right direction without missing anything along the way is quite a big ask, but we are definitely getting there" Michael Igoe

“We want to win it, Ian wants to win it, Yelmer wants to win it, so this is what we’ve got to focus on,” says Shufflebottom. “Ian has been doing British GT for quite a long time, he knows what needs to be done to win, and when you can’t win races you’ve got to make sure you score points. Yelmer is the same – he’s got so much experience and in qualifying is always able to turn it on and get a lap. Together they should be pretty strong.”

Throw into the mix a return of the Jonny Adam-Andrew Howard axis that yielded titles in 2013 and 2015 at Beechdean AMR, the race-winning JRM Bentley back after a year’s hiatus, and the first full-time Porsche entry since 2014 with 2017 title-winner Team Parker Racing, and there’s every reason to expect 2021 to be a thriller.

Ian Loggie, Yelmer Buurman (RAM Mercedes) Oulton Park British GT 2020

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GT4 - A repeat of 2018?

The absence of two-time and reigning GT4 champion TF Sport and its closest 2020 challenger, HHC Motorsport, means British GT’s secondary category has a somewhat different complexion this year. But numbers are up, with a healthy seven manufacturers on the grid for Brands Hatch.

For an indicator of what to expect, you could do worse than look back to the 2018 GT4 title battle for inspiration. That year featured a three-way thriller played out between two Century Motorsport BMWs and the leading lights of the new McLaren Driver Development Programme, then fielded by Tolman Motorsport.

It may be fanciful to expect two points to split the leading trio this term, but there’s every reason to expect Nathan Freke’s Fenny Compton-based Century squad to once again do battle with McLaren’s young chargers, that programme now run by Team Rocket RJN after a race-winning GT3 campaign in 2020 with Michael O’Brien and James Baldwin.

Assuming that both adapt well to Century’s well-proven BMW M4, series returnee Will Burns and Gus Burton will be an evenly matched frontrunning pair. The duo won over half of the 19 Ginetta GT4 Supercup races last year – five apiece – as category veteran Burns edged Ginetta Junior graduate Burton to the title.

Freke’s courting of Burns resulted in a test planned at Silverstone in November, only for fog to cause its cancellation. Burns then accepted an offer from Assetto Motorsport to race its new Ginetta G56 – “Because I’ve always been in a Ginetta, I thought it made sense for me to continue that partnership” – but was released from the deal when the team struggled to find him a co-driver, and was quickly snapped up to join Burton, an 18-year-old who Freke hopes will be a candidate to join BMW’s junior roster.

“I’ve known Nathan all the way through the Supercup years,” says Burns, “and I always wanted to go with Century but the opportunity never presented itself. It was easy for me to familiarise myself with that car – obviously it being front-engine, rear-wheel drive, it’s the same characteristics as the Ginetta. Gus is an extremely quick kid as well, so I think we’re going to make a strong pairing.”

Will Burns, 2020 Ginetta GT4 Supercup champion

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It’s the best line-up Century has put together since it finished 1-2 in 2018, when Jack Mitchell, aided by Dean Macdonald, edged Ben Tuck and Ben Green by a single point. And with the M4 boasting an upgrade package including a revamped traction control system that’s expected to improve driveability at the end of a stint on worn tyres, a title challenge is expected.

After a year’s COVID-enforced hiatus, the McLaren DDP is back with a quartet of drivers anxious to make up for spending 2020 on the sidelines. Back in 2018, O’Brien and Charlie Fagg finished just two points shy of Mitchell, while in 2019 the rapid James Dorlin and Josh Smith were dogged by bad luck.

"It wasn’t nice to not be racing for a year, but the lockdowns just helped me really focus on training. I’m the fittest that I’ve ever been and also eating right and being on the sim more. In the time we’ve had we’ve all come on massively" Katie Milner

It was exclusively an enterprise to blood British talent back then, but Katie Milner is the only Brit of the current intake. The former Ginetta racer joins Australian Harry Hayek, who has experience of the UK circuits from an abortive BRDC British Formula 3 Championship foray in 2017, while Swiss Alain Valente and Moroccan Michael Benyahia in the other car both have experience of the McLaren from Germany’s ADAC GT4 series in 2019. They won a race apiece in that contest, so they will be the expected frontrunners.

Even so, the daughter of 2002-03 British rally champion Jonny Milner believes that she is now a “completely different driver” after a year spent working with McLaren sim partner iZone, and that she can compete with the best at the sharp end.

“It wasn’t nice to not be racing for a year, but the lockdowns just helped me really focus on training,” Milner says. “I’m the fittest that I’ve ever been and also eating right and being on the sim more. In the time we’ve had we’ve all come on massively.”

Bob Neville’s RJN team may be new to the 570S GT4, but it has no shortage of GT4 competition experience to fall back on, with the 2011 Blancpain GT4 Cup and 2009 European GT4 teams titles under its belt. In its most recent GT4 foray in 2018 (its last season before the tie-up with Jenson Button and Chris Buncombe under the Team Rocket name), RJN ran Martin Plowman and Kelvin Fletcher close to the Pro-Am title.

Century BMW went head-to-head with Tolman-run DDP McLarens in 2018

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“We’ve got many GT4 podiums, wins and championships behind us so we’re not uncomfortable – we like GT4,” says Neville, whose team welcomes back engineer Simon Pollock from the factory Aston Martin World Endurance Championship set-up.

RJN has expanded to enter a third car for 2019 McLaren DDP alumnus Jordan Collard and ex-Speedworks Toyota driver James Kell. Collard, who was unfortunate not to win the title last year with the HHC McLaren squad, is expected to be a leading light.

“We’re expecting [Collard] to be our benchmark, and we’re delighted to have him in the team for that very reason,” says Neville, whose team is also running the JBXE Extreme E programme. “He’s got the experience, he’s got the speed and he’s got the knowledge of the car. The work we’ve done with him so far has worked out well.”

The best bet for stopping a 2018 rerun is likely to come from Steller Performance’s Audi R8, with Sennan Fielding and Richard Williams returning to GT4 after selected outings in GT3 last year, because their all-Silver status means they’re now ineligible for the senior class. They won on their last GT4 outing at Donington in 2019, and Williams has every reason to expect to hit the ground running.

“The great thing about Sennan and I working together is that we do like the car the same way,” says Williams, “so we get consistent feedback which has really helped to unlock more performance.

“If we turned up at Brands hoping for a top 10 finish, that wouldn’t be the right way to approach it. We go there expecting to win and that’s what we’re out to do.”

Richard Williams, Sennan Fielding 2019 British GT Donington

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