Oulton Park, 25th April 2011

Round 1

Driving for the Surrey-based Trackspeed Racing team, Richard Westbrook helped reigning British GT Champion, David Ashburn and the Trackspeed team establish an early lead in the 2011 British GT Championship this weekend.

Early in the weekend’s practice sessions, it soon became apparent that the team’s hard work over the winter months had paid off, with the Number 1 car of Ashburn and Westbrook setting the pace in Saturday’s testing which was followed-up with front row grid slots for both drivers.

Race one

Ashburn started race one behind the Ferrari 458 and both cars pulled out a lead from the pack of chasing cars behind. This was the case all the way to the 23 minute mark, when Ashburn dived into the pits for a quick and clean driver change with Westbrook that put them into the lead after all remaining cars in the field had pitted. With an established lead, Westbrook stroked the car home, fending-off the late challenge of a hard-charging Audi, to bring the No 1 car across the finish line, taking the win by just 1.6 seconds.

Race two

With Richard Westbrook behind the wheel for the start of Race Two, the team quickly pulled out a gap at the restart only to have it all undone by a second safety car period. Westbrook then made an early driver change for Ashburn to take the car home, but a 15-second win penalty dropped them into 5th. However, even an additional stop-and-go penalty did not prevent Ashburn from bringing the car home in 4th, for a very satisfactory weekend’s work.
 
Team manager, Keith Cheetham:

‘I am very happy with the performance of the team over the weekend, especially after pre-season testing, meant that we had to put a lot of work in on set-up just to keep on the pace of the New GT3 cars. There is still work to be done to keep up with the new cars, but I feel that we have made a big step from last season. David and Richard did a fantastic job this weekend, taking 37 points from both races, and the team did a great job as always. We’re very happy, and the pair now lead the championship by five points'.