Mitchell and Martin head Barwell Motorsport one-two in opening race in Norfolk to boost title hopes

Sant’Agata Bolognese/Snetterton, 15 July 2024 – Lamborghini recorded its fourth British GT Championship race win of the season at Snetterton courtesy of Barwell Motorsport’s Sandy Mitchell and Alex Martin. Meanwhile, the sister #63 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 of Rob and Ricky Collard boosted their title hopes with a pair of strong podium finishes.

Mitchell and Martin started second on the grid behind the #63 in race one and made the most of a success penalty for the latter crew to take their third win of the season. The #78 crew then finished first on the road in the second race from pole but a post-race time penalty meant they dropped to 10^th. As a result, the Collard father and son replicated their second-place finish from the morning.

Historically a strong circuit for the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 car, the Norwich venue was again a happy hunting ground for the Barwell Motorsport team, with the #78 of Martin and Mitchell pacing the opening free practice session on Saturday morning, setting a time of 1m46.108, just seven-hundredths of a second quicker than the next best car. After finishing second in Pre-Qualifying, the #78 completed the front-row of the grid for the first one-hour race on Sunday as the sister #63 of Collard/Collard produced a superb lap to take pole. Mitchell then took the #78 to a last-gasp pole for race two, topping the times with the final lap of the session.

Under blue skies and the track in perfect condition, the #63 – started by Rob Collard – held onto his lead at the first corner, despite going side by side with the #78 of Martin into the Wilson hairpin. The pair of Lamborghinis were the class of the field in the early stages, pulling well clear of third place before the mandatory pit-stops. Martin had closed to within a second of Collard but the latter, keen to minimise a five-second success penalty courtesy of finishing third at the previous round in Belgium, responded and extended his margin to 3.5-seconds. This meant that the two Huracáns, although positions swapped, were nose to tail on pit exit.

With Mitchell now at the wheel of the #78 and Ricky Collard at the helm of the #63, it was a straight fight to the flag, with the former stretching clear to the tune of over seven seconds as GT4 traffic proved tricky to overcome. A minor brake problem in the second stint caused some concern for the #78 crew, but Mitchell successfully managed to bring his car home to a third victory of the season with Collard confirming a dominant one-two finish for Barwell.

Sandy Mitchell, Lamborghini Factory Driver, said: “It was a very important win for us, our main rivals were further down the grid and Rob [Collard] was in P2, so we knew that we needed to get a good result given we had no success penalty carried over from Spa. Alex did a great job in his stint to stay as close as possible to Rob so that we came out of the pits just in front of them. It was quite tight at one point, but Alex did a good job, and it was a pretty textbook job from Barwell. We had a bit of a brake problem where the pedal seemed a bit long, but it didn’t seem to affect our performance, it was more of a feeling issue which we solved by just pumping the brake pedal more.”

Mitchell and Martin started the #78 from pole position for the second race on Sunday afternoon and made a strong start to open up a healthy lead before serving its mandatory driver-change pit-stop. A full course yellow period helped the crew to serve its success penalty and still return to the track in the lead. Martin took over from Mitchell for the second stint, but the car was then investigated by the stewards for passing under yellow flag conditions. Martin brought the #78 home first on the road but was denied a clean sweep of victories after receiving a 30-second converted drivethrough penalty. The #63 was therefore promoted initially to second place, but subsequently inherited second after the Ram Racing Mercedes was disqualified from the entire meeting following a post-race incident.