Tom Gamble – GTWC Sprint – Brands Hatch
The second round of the GT world challenge sprint championship was a home race for EDGE driver Tom Gamble as it took place on the historic Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit in Kent.
Gamble, driving his Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, was P5 in practice leading up to the weekend which showed some good promise and pace.
Qualifying is super important around the tight Brands Hatch Grand Prix layout and Gamble qualified fourth but was only 0.132 seconds off pole position. Gamble was a little disappointed with this as he felt that the car had the pace to be on the front row but 0.132 seconds off pole was very close indeed & again showed very strong pace going into the races.
Race one started well but going into turn three they were hit from behind which pushed them back down the field. It was then a recovery operation back to 4th at what is a difficult layout to overtake but they finished fourth less than three seconds off the lead and were very competitive lap time wise. Both drivers were a little disappointed again that their pace did not return at least a podium as the speed of the car and the drivers warranted this result.
In race two Gambles teammate, Benjamin Goethe, bought the car home in fourth place after his stint. Unfortunately, there was a hold-up in the pit stop and the left rear wheel got stuck which resulted in at least a 10 second delay before Gamble could get out on circuit. This left Gamble a difficult job as he tried to make his way through the field but eventually he got back to 6th place which was a good effort but again it could’ve been so much more.
After the weekend Gamble Commented: “4th & 6th are good results in some ways but, on the other hand, I think there was a bit more if we’d had a cleaner run but it puts us in good stead for the next round at Misano”
Results – Q-P4 / Race 1 – P4 / Race 2 – P6