RACE PREVIEW

MAIDEN BRITISH GT WIN TAKEN WITH LAST TO FIRST CHARGE

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A maiden win in the GT4 category was Matty’s reward for an outstanding drive in the first British GT race at Spa-Francorchamps, as he and team-mate Charlie Fagg bounced back from a back of the grid starting position.

Having dominated the two free practice sessions on Friday, a broken actuator pump left the pair and their Maserati GranTurismo MC GT4 unable to take part in the day’s qualifying sessions and forced to start both of the meeting’s races from the back of the grid.

On British GT’s biggest entry of the season, that meant Charlie would take the green flag for his first race in the series from 20th and last.

Despite a relative lack of experience in GT cars, the 17-year-old from Durham did well, with a very impressive opening pair of tours that saw him make up nine places before the race was neutralised with a safety car following a big crash for Ginetta driver Steve Fresle.

It’s an old adage in motorsport that yellows breed yellows and sure enough, following the restart, a second safety car was required following a coming together for Anna Walewska and Nick Jones that left the former’s Ginetta pinned underneath the latter’s Porsche and both stranded in the middle of the track.

With both clear ups proving to be time consuming affairs, it left Charlie unable to make any further progress, and with the field tightly packed, also resulted in places being lost during the driver changes as the all-silver pairings were hit with longer minimum pit stop times.

With the race back to green flag conditions as Matty took over, he was able to stretch the Maserati’s legs and was immediately on a charge, lapping faster than anything else in the field and taking chunks of time out of the lead enjoyed by the cars ahead in each sector.

His first target for a pass was Jesse Attilla in the number 29 In2Racing McLaren that Matty had raced in the early part of the season, with the Finnish driver holding the Ebor driver back for three laps through some aggressive, arguably questionable, defensive driving that saw Matty forced off track and into avoiding action on a number of occasions.

Once successfully through, the pace that the Northumbrian was running saw him continue his forward momentum at a rapid rate and up to seventh one lap later, after passing the Academy Motorsport Aston Martin and sister In2Racing McLaren on the next lap.

Lapping over two seconds faster than any other GT4 car on the circuit and setting a new class lap record in the process, Matty found himself fifth with two laps remaining and part of a four car scrap for second, with only a second and a half covering the whole train.

In a finish worthy of any film, the end of the race was filled with drama and in the case of Joe Osbourne and David Pattison heartbreak.

The pair were 15 second up the road and set for a dominant win before a puncture forced them to pit ahead of the start of the final lap meaning the squabble became one for the win.

Catching all three of the cars ahead of guard, Matty’s final tour around the circuit saw him not only snatch the lead, but surge home with a 5.8 second advantage to complete an outstanding back to front charge.