Andrew Gordon-Colebrooke battled unpredictable autumn conditions to clinch more solid points with two fighting drives in the second British GT Championship meeting at Donington Park this past weekend (15/16 August). Fresh from a maiden podium finish in the GT4 class last time out in the season opener at Oulton Park, Gordon-Colebrooke entered the second meeting at Donington Park hopeful of adding more silverware to the collection with Century Motorsport. The Buckinghamshire racer was left feeling more optimistic after a brace of hour-long free practice sessions on Saturday morning, as the BMW M4 GT4 finished less than a tenth of a second off of the fastest time in class on similar fuel levels, boding well ahead of the quickfire qualifying session. The 10-minute sessions to decide the grid netted seventh place for Sunday’s two races, although the unpredictable conditions threw a spanner into the works as drivers were presented with rain on the Sunday morning. The first of those races was a two-hour contest, with Gordon-Colebrooke taking over the BMW just before the halfway mark. The car was sat in a solid seventh place in class, where it ultimately stayed until the chequered flag despite Gordon-Colebrooke’s best efforts late in the race as he set a string of fastest laps giving chase to the McLaren of Euan Hankey. The weather eased heading into the afternoon meaning the field was split on tyre choice for the shorter hour-long sprint race, for which former Ginetta GT4 Supercar frontrunner Gordon-Colebrooke took charge of the opening stint from a starting spot of seventh place. Wet tyres appeared the correct call initially and Gordon-Colebrooke extracted the car's potential against those ahead in the early laps, but the track began to dry rapidly meaning that the Century Motorsport M4 was one of many GT4 cars to lose out. Gordon-Colebrooke handed the car over in the second half of the race still in contention for a top-five result, with team-mate Ben Hurst bringing it home seventh in class. Andrew Gordon-Colebrooke: “We went into qualifying off the back of a strong practice showing. The cars were all very comparable to each other in terms of both fuel levels and new tyres, so to be within a tenth of a second off the fastest car in the dry showed our pace was definitely there. "Unfortunately, the weather today threw us a bit of a curveball and that made it tougher. I felt we extracted a lot out of the car and especially in the latter part of the first race; I felt we were reeling them back in again so it's a shame that it ended a bit too early because we were flying. "I'm really looking forward to Brands Hatch and I know the car goes well around there. Hopefully we get better weather for it and, as we showed last year, we can get a good result and get up among the GT4 frontrunners." Gordon-Colebrooke is lookng for a return to the podium as he heads to Brands Hatch GP circuit in two weeks’ time (29/30 August) for another two-hour British GT race in Kent.
Image from Jakob Ebrey Photography.