31 May 2016
Jon Barnes and Mark Farmer came away from this weekend’s pair of hour-long races at Oulton Park in Cheshire with a new best dry weather race result of fourth place in race one, and backed that up with a solid seventh place in race two.
The free practice sessions went as expected for the TF Sport drivers in their Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3, with some worthwhile car setup work helping moving the team forward.
However, with the quality at the front of the 2016 British GT Championship being so strong and with the Aston carrying an extra 25kgs of ballast thanks to a Balance of Performance adjustment from the organisers, Jon and Mark felt slightly disappointed after both qualifying in 8th for their respective races.
With the typical two-hour race format replaced with a pair of one-hour contests for the British GT Championship’s Bank Holiday weekend at Oulton Park, opportunities for drivers to progress from their grid positions were relatively thin on the ground.
Farmer made a good start to race one, overtaking 2015 British GT Champion Andrew Howard and moving up into P7 before an early Safety Car intervention closed the field back up. Once the safety car pulled in to the pits, Farmer again drove superbly, overtaking the spinning Audi R8 of Will Moore at turn 1 and thus progressing up into 6th position, before pitting to hand over to Barnes.
After some superb work in the pits by the TF Sport crew, Barnes was able to emrge from the pits in 3rd position, right behind the BMW Z4 GT3 of Joe Osbourne. Barnes pushed hard to chase Osbourne for the first six laps of his stint, however, the BMW had changed to a brand new set of tyres during the stops and Barnes began to drop back when his used rubber started to overheat.The Team Parker Racing Bentley of Seb Morris was then hot on Barnes’s heels, and Morris was able to push past with a forceful manoevre into the Knickerbrook chicane after backmarkers came into play.
Barnes was able to hold off the sister TF Sport Aston Martin of reigning British GT Champion Jonny Adam for the remaining 15 mins of the race, coming home in 4th position and top Aston Martin driver.
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Barnes started race 2 from 8th on the grid, but with little or no chance of pulling an overtake on Oulton Park’s narrow and twisting confines, Barnes spent his entire stint baulked behind the BMW Z4 of Joe Osborne.
After another solid pitstop from TF Sport, Farmer rejoined still in 7th position, a place that he would easily hold on to until the chequered flag fell.
Round 5 of the 2016 Pirelli British GT Championship will be held at Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire on 11-12 June.
For more information visit Jon's website at www.jonbarnes.com
You can also follow him on Twitter, or you can watch his videos on YouTube.
ENDS