British GT Championship: Second title denied by the slenderest margin

Sandy shatters British GT Championship qualifying record at Brands Hatch with Barwell and Black Bull, but is denied second title by the slenderest margin.

Sandy shattered the British GT Championship qualifying record at Brands Hatch and pocketed his fourth maximum points finish of the season, but cruelly missed out on his second title by just two points. Partnered by team-mate Alex Martin in their No 78 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, prepared by Barwell Motorsport, the duo finished the two-hour race at the Kent circuit second on-track behind a non-scoring guest McLaren. But in a race punctuated by Full Course Yellow periods and Safety Cars, their championship rivals and sister Barwell Lamborghini driven by Rob and Ricky Collard held on to finish sixth and clinch the title. “First I’ve got to congratulate Rob and Ricky,” Sandy, the 2020 British GT champ, and personally-backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Scotch Whisky and Tunnocks, said. “If we couldn’t win the title, then better that it went to the sister Barwell car.”

Entering the weekend, Sandy knew he would have to re-write the record books by overhauling a 24.5-point deficit to lift the title. In qualifying he immediately illustrated his outright pace and intent by shattering the British GT lap record at the circuit which had stood since 2016. In a dazzling display, his new benchmark of 1min 22.196secs carved 0.711s off the previous record. With their combined qualifying times, Martin started the race from third on the grid and had immediately moved up to second place by the first corner, a position he comfortably held for the next 49 minutes. But with the #63 Lamborghini of the Collards sitting in third and due to serve a 20-second success penalty at their pitstop, which would have dropped them to around 10th position, the race was neutralised following an incident. With the decision taken to run the FCY through the pitstop window, and with all the cars running to a set speed of 80km/h — a little less than half of the normal average race speed — the penalty was effectively halved.

“That’s motorsport,” Sandy acknowledged. “Frustratingly for us the FCY ran through the pitstop window meaning those cars which had to serve a success time penalty benefitted significantly. Essentially the effect of the penalty was halved, massively reducing its intended impact.
“That of course helped the sister car we were battling with for the title, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.” Sandy was quick to praise the efforts of his team-mate who, for the first time, was both contesting the British GT Championship and driving a Lamborghini throughout this season. “Alex did a fantastic job at the start to get us into P2 overall, just behind the guest car,” he continued. “Crucially that meant we were P1 in terms of the point-scoring cars, important for our title hopes. That was a great effort, and his pace was really good.”

Such are the slender margins between winning and losing that just one moment could have swung the title in Sandy’s’s favour. His #78 Lamborghini was the innocent victim of contact with another car at Silverstone which forced an early retirement. A yellow flag infringement denied the duo a second victory and 24 points at Snetterton, then at Donington Martin suffered a puncture when another victory was probable.

“It’s obviously easy to look back now and say what we could possibly have done differently,” Sandy stated. “With it being such a small margin between winning the title and not, it’s only one thing during the season which could have swung it in our favour. “Of course there are a few which stick out, but equally we’ve had a great effort. We’ve had the most race wins in the season, plus four maximum point-finishes, which essentially equates to four race wins. We probably feel we’ve been the fastest car consistently throughout the year, but at the end of the day to win a championship it’s about how well you do when you’re not winning. Unfortunately we just had a couple of rounds with no points, and that’s what made the difference.”