Sant’Agata Bolognese, 30 August 2020 – Lamborghini recorded a third British GT race victory in as many rounds as Sandy Mitchell and Rob Collard (#78 Barwell Motorsport Huracán GT3 Evo) came out on top at the end of two hours at Brands Hatch in Kent.
The Silver Cup partnership started second on the grid following Saturday’s qualifying session and maintained that position for the opening hour as the McLaren of Michael O’Brien and James Baldwin led the way. Two safety car interventions bunched the field back up together however, which gave Collard the perfect moment to take the mandatory driver-change pit-stop to hand over to Mitchell.
The British duo made the most of a bizarre incident whereby a course vehicle ended up driving down the pitlane while cars were making their stops, to emerge at the head of the field before the second restart. Despite this slightly fortuitous assumption of the lead, new Lamborghini GT3 Junior Driver Mitchell expertly led away from O’Brien’s McLaren, holding a slender margin of just over half a second.
That grew to a fraction over one-and-a-half seconds entering the final 10 minutes of the race, before the young Scotsman came under pressure while lapping slower GT4 traffic. Thankfully, the lead battle for GT4 honours kept largely out of the way of Mitchell’s Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo in the final minutes, and the Barwell combination claimed their first race win of the season so far.
It was Barwell’s second win in three rounds, having taking Race 2 spoils on the opening weekend at Oulton Park. Behind Mitchell and Collard, Lamborghini Factory Driver Franck Perera and team-mate Michael Igoe claimed a valuable sixth-place finish in their WPI Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo – which won last time out at Donington Park – to boost their title chances.
The next round of the British GT Championship takes place on the weekend of September 19-20th, for the second meeting at Donington Park.