Lamborghini factory driver Sandy delivers a masterclass at Donington Park

Lamborghini Factory Driver and former Champ Sandy, delivers British GT Championship masterclass in season final at Donington with Barwell.

Sandy delivered a masterclass in racing in treacherous wet conditions, on slick tyres, to ensure he and team-mate Alex Martin dominated the British GT Championship finale at Donington Park.

Sandy, the 25-year-old from Forfar, again partnered Martin in the No 78 Lamborghini Huracan Evo2 GT3, prepared by Barwell Motorsport. And the Scot, making only his fourth and final outing in this season’s seven-weekend championship, again displayed his talent by topping the timesheets in five of the six sessions. Fastest in the Pro qualifying session, Sandy looked on as Martin started the two-hour race from second on the grid, a result of their combined qualifying times, behind the pole-sitting sister Barwell Lamborghini of Rob Collard and Hugo Cook.

On the start, Martin immediately shadowed defending champ Collard before a Full Course Yellow and Safety Car after 25-minutes bunched the field up again. On the restart, with intermittent rain hitting parts of the circuit, Collard established a 5.6sec advantage after 47-minutes. But over the next 15mins, Martin dramatically slashed the advantage to just 0.5secs when he pitted to hand the car to Sandy with 57mins remaining.

“Alex drove a fantastic stint,” 2020 British GT champ Sandy, personally-backed by Tunnocks and Dama Fortuna Premium Tequila, stated. “He did a great job of looking after his tyres and managed to come back really strongly at the end of his stint, eventually coming in less than a second behind.” With Collard and Cook having finished on the podium last time out at Brands Hatch, they had to serve an extra 10secs success penalty at their pitstop. That ensured Sandy led when he joined the track.

After all the mandatory pitstops had been completed, Sandy led Cook by 8.714secs with 50mins remaining. But with 39mins remaining, the circuit was hit by a series of heavy showers brought in by the strong wind. With the majority of cars remaining on slicks, Sandy mastered the tricky conditions to extend his advantage to more than 15secs in the following two laps. But as conditions worsened, and lap times dropped — with 32mins remaining, Sandy lapped the 2.48-mile Leicestershire circuit in 1min 46.674secs, compared to his fastest of 1:27.242s — the bulk of Pro drivers pitted for wet tyres. Sandy and Cook remained on Pirelli slicks.

“Fighting through the rain was really difficult,” Sandy explained, “and obviously doing 1:46s on slicks, you’d be at least 10s a lap faster on wets. But we all did a really good job. I just kept updating the team on the track conditions and they let me know what they could see from the weather radar. Then we could jointly make a call. They felt it would blow through and conditions would improve, and that was 100% correct. We did the right thing staying out. It was painful for 15-20 minutes or so, but after that the track dried really fast, we were on the right tyres, the pace returned quickly and I was able to pull away.”

Such was Sandy’s mastery of the conditions that he eventually took the chequered flag 30.945s ahead of the sister Lamborghini. “It’s a great way to finish my British GT season,” Sandy continued. “This is the fourth podium finish of the season with Alex, which is a great return on the six races we’ve contested this year. And to finish with a win, and a 1-2 for Barwell is fantastic.”

Sandy also had praise for both Cook and Martin, who finished second and fourth respectively in this year’s championship, with Martin just 2.5pts off third.
“Both Hugo and Alex have delivered strong performances right through the nine races in the season,” he continued. “The level of competition has been super-high this year, and for everyone at Barwell to deliver the results we have just shows how strong the team and the Lamborghinis have been.”

Sandy returns to action with this weekend (Oct 11/12) when he contests the final three-hour race of the GT World Challenge Europe, powered by AWS, Pro Endurance Cup in Barcelona with top Italian team Vincenzo Sospiri Racing.