Racing update

Mon 21 Nov 2011

Congratulations to our Champions

After a commanding performance Andy Ruhan took the 2011 GT Cup Championship title in his Group 1 Porsche 997 followed by David Tomlin who pushed him hard all season in his immaculate Group 1 Ferrari 430 GTC and third overall went to Tom Andrew with his Group 2 Morgan Aero 8.  Within the Groups first and second in Group 1 went of course to Andy Ruhan and David Tomlin whilst Third in Group 1 was taken by Rupert Martin in his striking Dextra liveried Ferrari 430 GTC.  In Group 2, Tom Andrews first place was followed by Francis Galashan in his Porsche 996 and third Sean Winder in his Ferrari 360GTC.  In Group 3 Barclay Dougal took the honours in his BMW with Mark Radcliff taking second in his BMW and Adam Haze made it a clean sweep for BMW in third.

 

Plans for 2012 

As GT Cup prepares for its third year as a Championship, Bute Motorsport are currently finalising the 2012 calendar and regulations.  Working closely with MSVR the calendar looks set to feature some great tracks once again, including Brands Hatch GP and Donington Park. The format of the GT Cup Championship race weekends will be restructured to give a single slightly longer qualifying session and three sprint races varying in length.  Other important changes include opening up of entries to faster GT cars such as GT3 homologated, Ferrari 458 and 2011/2012 Porsche 997, the strengthening of Bute Motorsports organisational team with the appointment of a Competition Manager to join Hannah our Championship Coordinator and introduction of chassis dyno power testing.  Andy Dawson will not be continuing with the GT Cup Championship in 2012 and we thank him for his help in 2011 and wish him well in his new project.  There will be other exciting developments announced shortly including GT Cup's presence at the Autosport show on January 12 - 15 on the Pirelli stand where we look forward to meeting with existing and new customers.

 

In the meantime, interested parties should please contact GT Cup via email to Hannah@butemotorsport.co.uk to express their interest in the coming year.

 

Annual Awards Evening - Sat 28th January 2012

As the run up to Christmas tends to be a bit frantic we have decided to hold our Annual Awards Night in January 2012 on Saturday 28th. The venue for the Awards Evening will be the Haynes International Motor Museum at Sparkford in Somerset.  We have reserved rooms at the Hollies hotel nearby to the museum and will be arranging transport between the Hollies and the Museum.  The evening will start with a Champagne reception held amongst the sports and GT cars in the museums famous ‘Red Room' and will then move on to a four course dinner in the adjacent Merlin Suite with a presentation ceremony and party into the night.  The Awards night will only cost £49 pp including hotel transfer if staying at the Hollies but excludes the cost of hotel accommodation.  Tables of 10 will also be available at a discount of £450 per table.  Booking forms will be issued in the next week but please get the date in your diary and join us for what will be a great night.

 

Thank You

Most importantly I would like to thank all our competitors, suppliers and of course staff. I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking our wonderful 2011 sponsors namely Dextra, Marque 1, MMC, FTS Hatswell, LKM and Slater Rhodes without whose generous assistance we could not have provided such a great package for spectators and competitors.  Thank you also to Wayne, Carl, Natham and Mathew from Pirelli for continuing to provide such great tyres and to Joey and Pete Ascott, Bryan White from Wheeltech for their first class tyre fitting service and Anders Hilderbrand from Sunoco.  MSVR and our MSA scrutineer Chris Mount have continued to supply us with excellent race infrastructure and I would like to thank David Scott and David Willey in particular for their continued support but also recognise the vital contribution made by so many others including officials, marshals and administration staff.  Thanks to Graham Goodwin and Mark Howson from DailySportscar.com for our wonderful race reports and Roy Ng and Mick Herring for their stunning race photography.  On the PR front a big thank you to Charlie George who has been the face of GT Cup on TV and Nick Barnet of Race TV along with the guys from Motors TV.