Battle Showdown for Final Round as Tom Sharp takes the Win
Tom Sharp took a well deserved victory in the penultimate round of the Michelin Ginetta GT Supercup at Silverstone. Ensuring the title will go down to the wire in the final round of the season.
The weekend started off with Adam Morgan qualifying a mere 0.026 seconds ahead of Carl Breeze with George Murrells an excellent third. Nathan Freke was fourth fastest, just 0.032 seconds clear of hugely impressive newcomer Jamie Orton for TCR with IDL’s Sharp rounding out the top six qualifiers.
When the lights went out, Adam Morgan held his advantage at the start initially but Carl Breeze managed to squeeze up the inside of Morgan on the run into Copse. Nathan Freke attempted to go around the outside of both the drivers but had to settle for second behind Breeze with Morgan down to third.
Into Brooklands, Freke tried to challenge Breeze on the inside but there was contact and that enabled Sharp to take the lead, with Morgan narrowly avoiding the coming together. Breeze managed to hold third place but this resulted in Freke slipping out of contention and all but ending his championship chances.
An incident involving G50 runners Louise Richardson and Aaron Williamson brought out the safety car and the red flag resulting in the race being stopped.
On the restart, Sharp got a textbook start and pulled away with George Murrells taking third off Carl Breeze. Despite being under pressure from Morgan for the rest of the race, Tom Sharp held his nerve and took the chequered flag to claim his eighth win of the season.
“Sometimes everything just goes your way really and I think that happened for us today, commented Sharp. I couldn’t see exactly what happened but it looked like Nathan had all-four wheels locked-up and he slid into Carl. Then a couple of doors opened – Adam, being the wise one, decided to back out of it but I just shot across the green turf and that was it!”
“At the re-start, I got probably the best start I have all year. I really didn’t think we had anymore left in the clutch really. The car’s not been the best this weekend, the guys did a massive repair job after the accident at Brands – the chassis held intact though which shows how strong the car is. I’m delighted with this win, anything can happen in the last race so we’ll keep trying as hard as we can.”
Second placed man Adam Morgan was relived to keep second place after it looked like he might not finish at all.
“I made it hard work for myself with a bad start off the line, then Nathan and Carl came through but at Luffield they collided”, explained Morgan, “I thought I was going to go off with them but then I anchored on and Tom got me. From there I just played it safe, I’m happy with second as it’s good points and it all goes down to tomorrow for the championship. We know what we have to do.”
George Murrells held on to fourth comfortably, Freke finished in fifth and Colin White took sixth place.
For full race classification click here.
For full championship standings click here.
Photo Credit: Jakob Ebrey (http://www.jakobebrey.com)
Nico Aaron Ugbaja
