Team Parker Wins Silverstone 500 with Pit Strategy

Team Parker Racing took its second British GT Championship win of the season at the Silverstone 500 on Sunday, playing pit strategy to perfection while rivals were caught out.

Seb Morris and Rick Parfitt led most of the race on track after Parfitt had a strong start from the second on the grid, passing Jack Mitchell at Copse.

Thereafter the Team Parker pairing completed its three mandatory pit stops and driver changes with fairly even stint times, while many other teams decided to leave two pit stops to the final hour of the race.

Team Parker was able to use shorter stints throughout as a result, meaning it only had to fill the fuel tank up to 70 percent each stop, which helped with pace.

This strategy play gave Morris and the No. 31 Bentley Continental GT3 a lead of over one-minute, three-seconds as he took the win, with James Littlejohn second in the Macmillan AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT4.

“Our strategy depended on me getting ahead at the start – I second-guessed the lights a little bit, which worked really well, so I was ahead going into Copse and then made the most of our Bentley’s advantage through sectors one and two to open a gap,” explained Parfitt.

“But all afternoon we were keen to stay out of trouble, which worked for the most part!

“It’s great to win, but I’d also like to dedicate it to my late Dad who was here last season and I’m sure would have loved to have been this year as well.”

Matt Griffin completed the podium in the Spirit of Race Ferrari 488 GT3, meanwhile.

Phil Keen and Sam Tordoff held onto fourth and sixth in the Barwell Lamborghinis, while Adam Christodoulou finished fifth on his British GT GT3 debut with Team ABBA with Rollcentre Racing.

It was a weekend to forget for reigning champion TF Sport as Jonny Adam and Derek Johnston could only managed ninth with a suspected power steering failure while the sister car of Jon Barnes and Mark Farmer was seventh.

This was partly as a result of contact between Farmer and Parfitt, which had no further action after an investigation.

The Ferrari and both Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3s pitted twice in the final hour, with Barwell Team Manager Mark Lemmer admitting that he had been expecting more stoppages to the race in which pit stops would be made.

Adam Mackay and Adam Balon took the Track-Club McLaren 570S GT4 to their second GT4 win of the season, in a tight battle throughout the race.

Academy Motorsport finished a hectic weekend on a high, coming second in GT4.

Matt Nicoll-Jones and Will Moore took part in the first GT4 European Series race at Red Bull Ring on Saturday before travelling over to Silverstone in time for the race.

Impressively, Moore made up over ten positions in his opening stint to secure a top five position having started from the back of the field.

In2Racing’s Matty Graham and Marcus Hoggarth completed the GT4 podium, meanwhile.

Championship leaders Will Tregurtha and Stuart Middleton lost a lot of time after their HHC Ginetta G55 GT4 suffered a broken drive-shaft in the opening laps.

RESULTS: Silverstone 500