British GT Championship: Oulton Park

Lamborghini Factory Driver Sandy bags the first points of 2023, after British GT Championship opener, with Black Bull and Barwell.

Former champ Sandy left Oulton Park, after the opening double-header of the 2023 Intelligent Money British GT Championship on Easter Monday, having banked his first points of the season. But perhaps more importantly, the 23-year-old from Forfar and his Barwell Motorsport team continued to adapt to their new-spec Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2.

“This was the first race weekend we’ve had with the all-new Huracan Evo2,” Sandy, a Lamborghini factory driver and member of the British Racing Drivers’ Club, stated, “and we’re all taking time to adapt to the 2023 race car. “We took away some really strong positives in relation to the car and we’ll head to the the next round, the three-hour race at Silverstone next month, armed with a lot more information.”

Sandy has twice won the British GT’s Blue Riband race at the famous circuit. Sandy and new team-mate Shaun Balfe’s #78 Barwell Lamborghini started both 60-minute races at Outon Park in Cheshire from seventh on the 36-car grid. In miserable wet and cold conditions, Bale took the opening stint in Race 1 — his first behind the wheel of the Lamborghini — and had slid back to 10th as the rain fell more heavily before handing the car to Sandy. He rejoined in 13th and had battled back to fight for seventh before a pitstop infringement caused him to serve a Stop-Go penalty, dropping him back to 12th at the chequered flag.

Four hours later Sandy, personally-backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Scotch Whisky, started the second one-hour race, again from seventh, and soon found himself tucked right up behind the rear bumper of the #27 McLaren of former team-mate Rob Bell. “I had the pace to overtake, but because of the very tight nature of Oulton Park — which means it’s very difficult to overtake a similarly-paced GT3 car — allied to the wall of water being thrown up by the cars in front, I just couldn’t get passed,” Sandy explained. Holding seventh, Sandy handed the car over to Balfe at the regulation pitstop and watched on as his team-mate held the position through to the chequered flag.

“That was a tough weekend for everyone in the team,” the 2020 British GT champ continued. “But we’ll all learn from it and I know we’ll be fired up to score another win at Silverstone next month.”