GT Cup Round Four Oulton Park 25/07/09

The GT Cup travelled north to Oulton Park with a full grid and seven newcomers to the Series. Proving again what a popular series this has become.

Race One:- In Group One this was always going to be a ‘head to head' show down between the two big American muscle cars, Mike Gardiner's Dodge Viper (#57) and Mitch Millet's Corvette C5R (#51).  It didn't take long for these two to get away from the pack and set about their own personal race. It was an excellent battle that Mitch Miller won in the Corvette making him only the second person to beat the Viper this season, the other being Mike Donovan at Brands. This time Mike Donovan (#49) was involved in some of the best racing of the weekend when John Gaw (#81) in his rapid Group Two Porsche 997 GT3 Cup car got ahead of him and then spent the entire race fending off the Group One car of Donovan. The two of them were never more than a car's length apart but Donovan simply couldn't find a way past, it was a very close, very well driven race by both of them! We also saw the immaculate BMW E46 GTR of Don Grice (#70) out in The GT Cup for the first time.

So John Gaw won Group Two ahead of the Porsches of George Brewster (#11) and Bob Lyons (#79) and unlike the previous round the Ferraris, unusually, didn't get onto the podium.

Group Three saw the debut of Benji Hetherington (#73), at 17 yrs old easily the youngest driver the GT Cup has ever seen. Even so he drove a superbly mature race in his Ginetta G50 coming home ahead of regulars Alex Martin ( #87 Porsche 996 GT3 Cup) and Barclay Dougal ( #37 BMW E46 M3). Three different marques in the first three places.

Group Four saw the return of Sarah Bennett-Baggs (#72), this time in an Aston Martin GT4.  However she had hardly driven the car before the weekend so this left Will Goff (#59) in his Aston Martin GT4 with yet another straightforward win ahead of the Porsche 944 Turbo of David Botterill.

Race Two: Once again this was a clash between the two big V8's. However this time Mike Gardiner (#57) got ahead of Mitch Millett (#51) but the Viper never really got far enough ahead to allow Mike Gardiner to relax and things got quite tense as they made their way through the tail enders. At the finish Gardiner had a slim 2.713 sec advantage.  With Phil Dryburgh (#81)  rather than John Gaw to contend with Mike Donovan (#49) had a rather quieter race and brought his Porsche home a lonely 3^rd.

In Group two things were much busier... George Brewster in his Porsche GT3 Cup car (#11) found himself up against the two Ferrari 430 Challenge GTs of Leon Price (#88) and Ian Hartley (#5) who were right back on the pace this time and this gave us another excellent race.

Group Three saw Benji Hetherington and his Ginetta G50 back at the front but this time regular Ferrari man Marco Pullen was in the frame and he wasn't about to let Hetherington have everything his own way and we had another superb race long battle and despite Pullen putting in the fastest lap and trying everything he knew he was rarely less than a few feet from Hetherington's back bumper, until Steve Parish in his Group Two Porsche 997 GT3 Cup car squeezed between them on the closing laps. But despite his best efforts Pullen could not find a way through and finished less than a second behind the Ginetta.

In Group Four Will Goff maintained his 100% winning record ahead of David Botterill and Sarah Bennett-Baggs.

As usual The GT Cup gave us two excellent races with individual battles going on all the way through the field... the next round is at Donington Park on August 15/16^th.

Back to 2009 Season