Morris Pips Sims to Silverstone 500 Pole

Photo: British GT

Seb Morris and Rick Parfitt Jnr. claimed pole for the British GT Championship’s flagship event, the Silverstone 500, in their No. 31 Team Parker Racing Bentley Continental GT3.

Parfitt led the GT3 Am qualifying session, with a best time of 2:02.754 in the opening ten-minute window.

Morris then ensured that the No. 31 Bentley crew, which comes to Silverstone with the second race win at Oulton Park two weeks ago, would start from pole on Sunday, by setting a lap time of 2:00.082.

Added together, this gave the team a qualifying time of 4:02.836, which was 0.071 seconds ahead of the second place Lamborghini Huracán GT3.

The car in question was the No. 6 Lamborghini of Liam Griffin and Alexander Sims. The latter replaces Adam Carroll, who has jumped ship from Barwell Motorsport to FF Corse for the Silverstone round. Sims is slated to complete the season with Barwell.

Row 2 will be populated by a pair of Aston Martin Vantage GT3s come Sunday, with TF Sport’s No. 17 entry of Jonny Adam and Derek Johnston qualified third, ahead of Beechdean AMR’s No. 1 Aston of Ross Gunn and Andrew Howard.

Rob Bell and Alasdair McCaig secured fifth position in their Black Bull Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 650S GT3, while the one-off second entry for Team Parker Racing will start the race from sixth on the grid. This No. 24 Bentley is being driven by Ian Loggie and Callum Macleod.

AMDtuning.com’s BMW Z4 GT3 of Joe Osborne and Lee Mowle will start seventh, alongside FF Corse’s Ferrari 488 GT3, which makes its series debut this weekend with Marco Attard and Adam Carroll at the wheel.

The British GT4 entries fared considerably better than their European GT4 counterparts all through Saturday, and the highest European entry only qualified eighth on the GT4 grid.

Ciaran Haggerty and Sandy Mitchell are set to start from pole in GT4, with their No. 59 Black Bull Ecurie Ecosse McLaren 570S GT4.

Their combined time was 4:25.628, and 1.090 seconds faster than the No. 407 Aston Martin Vantage GT4 of Jordan Albert and Jack Bartholomew.

Anna Walewska and Nathan Freke will start third in the No. 73 Century Motorsport Ginetta G55 GT4, next to the new Academy Motorsport Aston Martin of Dennis Strandberg and Matt Nicoll-Jones.

The highest-placed European GT4 entry was the No. 109 Racing Team Holland by Ekris Motorsport BMW M4 GT4, driven by Ricardo van der Ende and Bernhard van Oranje.

The orange BMW will start from eighth amongst the GT4 runners, with a combined qualifying time of 4:28.651.

Duncan Huisman and Luc Braams were second out of the European runners, in the No. 102 Chevrolet Camaro GT4 run by V8 Racing International.

The three-hour Silverstone 500 race, which combines the British GT and Competition102 GT4 European Series grids, will get underway on Sunday at 12:50 p.m. local time.

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.