British GT Championship: Spa
Lamborghini Factory Driver Scot Sandy, retains British GT Championship lead with storming driver at Spa with Black Bull and Barwell.
Sandy maintained his lead in the British GT Championship with a storming drive in the latest incident-packed two-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
The 24-year-old from Forfar, partnered by team-mate Alex Martin in the Dextra-backed No 78 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 prepared by Barwell Motorsport, finished fourth, despite having to serve a 15-second success penalty, a result of having won the previous race at Donington. “This weekend was always about damage limitation, and we’ve achieved exactly what we hoped for,” Sandy, personally backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Scotch Whisky, Tunnocks, Alan Davie Transport, Upper Dysart and Results Gym, stated.
“We head to Snetterton for the next round still leading the championship and, having finished fourth, we have no success penalty so we’ll be going all-out to win the opening 60-minute race.”
The duo qualified third on the 36-car Spa grid, and there was chaos right at the start when, exiting Turn One a number of cars made contact behind Martin in the #78 Lamborghini. The incident, in which thankfully no drivers were hurt, saw six cars retire but damage to the safety barriers caused the race to be red-flagged and suspended for 39 minutes to allow repairs to be made. When the race restarted behind the Safety Car, organisers reduced the race length from two hours to 90 minutes. With 43 minutes of the race remaining, Martin made his compulsory pitstop from sixth, handing the car over to Sandy. After serving the additional 15-second success penalty, the Scot found himself in eighth after the GT3 pitstops hade been completed and immediately set a new lap record of 2min 16.315secs.
With 34 minutes remaining Sandy had climbed to seventh place when he romped past the #10 Aston Martin and, as he rattled off a series of fast laps quickly found himself tight on the rear bumper of the sixth-placed #6 Mercedes. The Scot made an audacious pass with 24 minutes remaining, then two minutes later eased himself ahead of the #77 McLaren to move up to fifth, having overtaken three cars in rapid succession. The unfortunate late retirement of fellow Scot and former champ Jonny Adam’s Aston Martin promoted Sandy to fourth.
“That was a bruising race for everyone,” Sandy, who saw his championship lead reduced from 9.5-points to three, stated. “But despite the success penalty we have banked a solid haul of championship points. Importantly, our two closest challenges in the title race each have success time penalties to serve at Snetterton so we have to make sure we take advantage and extend our championship lead. We’ve got three weekends and four races left in the season. We always knew it was going to be tough. This is one of the most competitive GT3 national championships there is, but as long as we keep scoring points we’ll be in the mix for the title when we get to the final round.”