Photo: BritishGT.com / Jakob Ebrey Photography.
Flick Haigh and Jonny Adam, piloting the #75 Optimum Motorsport Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3, took their third pole position of the 2018 British GT Championship season at Brands Hatch after Haigh lapped the 2.433-mile GP circuit in 1:27.347 and Adam topped the GT3 Pro time-sheets with a 1:25.182, the second quickest time in the 10-minute session.
Joining the #75 car on the front row of the grid will be the #99 Beechdean AMR Aston Martin of Andrew Howard and Darren Turner with an aggregate time of 2:52.960, less than half a second behind the poe-sitter.
Completing the top three in the GT3 category will be the #33 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 of GT3 Drivers Championship leaders, Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen, who put in an aggregate time of 2:53.157.
The four ten-minute sessions were not without incident after the TF Sport #11 Aston Martin went into the gravel at Paddock Hill bend during the GT3 Am session, Mark Farmer having to be recovered, which led to s four-minute red flag.
TF Sport’s bad luck continued in the second GT3 session after Narco Sorensen, at the wheel of the sister #17 car lost a wheel. Both of the issues meant that the TF Sport entries will both start from the back of GT3 grid.
Flick Haigh and Jonny Adam were delighted with their qualifying performance.
“Yes, lovely,” said Jonny Adam. “The Championship is hotting up now It’s important round here to qualify well. The car has been progressively better as the day’s gone on but, yes, a solid job from Flick and myself to get it up there but it’s a long way until tomorrow. We got a ten-second stop penalty so we need to bag points and see what the outcome is tomorrow.”
“We’ve got a good team and a really fast teammate in Flick and it’s all gelled really well.,” continued Adam. “We’ve had our bad luck but we’re on a role now. We’ve really got the car hooked up now and we’ve done a lot of testing to get Flick to this level with the aim of winning the Championship.”
“We’ve had our bad luck as Jonny said but when we’ve needed to, we’ve got the points,” said Flick Haigh. “When we’ve had good days, we’ve had really good days so, fingers crossed, we’ll get some good points (tomorrow).”
Century Motorsport dominated GT4 qualifying with the Fenny Compton-based team locking out the class front row. Dean Macdonald and Jack Mitchell will start Sunday August 5’s two-hour race from class pole with an aggregate 3:06.45 with the sister #42 car starting alongside ater Ben Tuck and Ben Green lapped in an aggregate 3:06.067.
“Century has done an amazing job and hopefully tomorrow goes just as well,” said Jack Mitchell. “We’ve got a 20-second penalty tomorrow which will hold us back a bit but we know we’ve got good race pace and as long as we get a BMW on the top step of the podium, I’ll be happy.”
The lights go out for Round Eight of the 2018 British GT Championship at 13:40 local time on Sunday August 5.
