The ex-IndyCar racer in "uncharted territory" of British GT team ownership

We’ve been here before.

Entering the final round of the British GT Championship at Donington Park, five crews are still in mathematical title contention and the circuit’s knack for throwing up the unpredictable means that, even with a healthy 18.5-point lead and no success penalty to serve in the pits, Leo Machitski and Dennis Lind aren’t counting their chickens.

They were the blameless victims of Turn 1 aggression in the first visit to Donington earlier this year, and a repeat non-score could throw the door wide open once more, as their Barwell Motorsport team boss Mark Lemmer knows only too well from prior experience.

Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen had 11.5 points in hand in 2016 when Minshaw encountered tardy Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood's GT4 Aston in the Craner Curves and went off in avoidance, losing the title to Jonny Adam and Derek Johnston. Together with Graham Davidson, Adam also capitalised on a Barwell non-score in 2019, when Keen and Adam Balon’s six-point advantage was squandered by suspension damage following Balon’s brush with a KTM GT4 car.

“We’re really confident going into the final round,” says Lemmer, “but we know more than any other team in British GT that anything can happen.”

For those not in the title fight, Donington will provide one last opportunity to end the year on a high and could make all the difference to those all-important off-season discussions with sponsors and partners. Ones to watch will be the Team Abba Mercedes of Richard and Sam Neary (winners at Donington earlier this year) and Paddock Motorsport’s Bentley, with Kelvin Fletcher and Martin Plowman scoring their first pole of the season at Oulton Park last time out.

First podium for Paddock Motorsport came at Snetterton, a circuit it had not expected to contend at

Photo by: Jakob Ebrey Photography

For the latter pair, the 2021 campaign has been one of upheaval. The 2019 GT4 Pro-Am champions with Prodrive running under the Beechdean AMR banner, soap actor-turned dancer extraordinaire Fletcher and 2014 Indianapolis 500 starter Plowman had planned to step up to GT3 with the GT1 world championship-winning JRM outfit in 2020. But with sponsorship deals hinging on hospitality packages that were rendered impossible by the pandemic, their plans were derailed and the programme deferred by a year.

After a long winter of lockdown, a crunch meeting with JRM in April made it clear that the finances would be tight, even before a wheel had been turned in anger. Only one round into the season, Fletcher and Plowman were forced to take over the running of the programme with their own Paddock team, which had been set up to run Mazda MX-5s and expanded this year to field a McLaren 570S GT4 in the GT Cup.

Having been a race winner in Indy Lights for Andretti Autosport in 2010, worked with future Indianapolis 500-winning race engineer Ben Bretzman when he made his IndyCar debut for AFS/Sam Schmidt Motorsports in 2011 and taken victory in the LMP2 class at the Le Mans 24 Hours with Oak Racing in 2013, Plowman knows the constituent parts of an effective racing team. But the number of people required to run any GT3 car properly - let alone the highly complex Bentley Continental GT3 - is an entirely different prospect to an MX-5 and Plowman knew it.

"We were going into uncharted territory. Really, we were playing catch-up in terms of personnel and organisation of who was doing what and what the rest of the year looked like" Martin Plowman

Fortunately, a solution was close at hand - Plowman's father Mark stepped up to allow the drivers to get on with their jobs on race weekends and was “the glue to keep it all together” through the early uncertainty.

“The core of the team essentially remained unchanged,” explains Plowman, who returned to sportscar racing in Europe after plans to stay in IndyCar with Foyt Enterprises in 2015 were scuppered by a lack of funds. “But, in terms of upper management, that’s where drafting my dad in was a no-brainer. Even though he might not have an in-depth motorsport knowledge at that level, managing people is bread and butter to him and making sure that things are running smoothly.”

Plowman Sr owns a printing company that has been in business for over 40 years. He had to call on all of his experience when the season threatened to hit the skids early on.

“We all went into a meeting and were basically told, ‘Maybe we can get one race out of it, maybe two’, but we got one out of it,” he says. “We were in a mess. But we were able to strike a deal with the incumbent to take over the assets and we’ve secured a good, core team that has been developed into a real tight-knit community.”

Plowman has drafted in his father to help with man management on race weekends

Photo by: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Even so, it has been a learning curve for all involved.

“We were going into uncharted territory,” explains Plowman Jr. “Really, we were playing catch-up in terms of personnel and organisation of who was doing what and what the rest of the year looked like.”

The Bentley’s peaky characteristics – “It’s got a very narrow performance window,” acknowledges Plowman Jr – has presented further challenges, as has the team’s limited test running. But new engineer Mark Chittenden coming on board with a different philosophy to JRM’s aero-first approach – “He believes it’s a mechanical grip car,” says Plowman Sr – yielded a breakthrough podium at Snetterton that has given the team added belief.

“In pre-season testing there, we were nowhere,” says Plowman Jr. “We had no hope in hell, we were three seconds off the pace and scratching our head trying to figure out why we were struggling so badly. But we tried some different things and turned it around.

“Kelvin against the amateurs has done an incredible job and I feel like myself, against the factory drivers who are out 30 times per year in the same car, the performance has been getting closer. We’re not where we want to be yet, but we’ve maximised the opportunities we’ve had.”

Ahead of a winter of consolidation, Plowman Jr says discussions have already commenced with Bentley for next season: “Considering the uncertainty of the year, they have been very helpful, and very supportive of us.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, with so much to distract his focus, Plowman admits he’s not up to speed on the championship permutations to judge whether there will be any surprises this weekend.

“To be brutally honest, I don’t even have a clue who is fighting for what,” he says. “When you’re not in a tight championship fight, you don’t really pay attention to anybody else. You treat every race as an individual event, so we just want to go out there this weekend and give it our best shot.”

The Paddock team was created for MX-5 racing in 2020, so the Bentley programme has meant a considerable step up

Photo by: Jakob Ebrey Photography