Balfe Motorsport look to build on opening day win

Balfe kick-started their British GT Championship season in style on the 1st August weekend when Mia Flewitt & Euan Hankey took their McLaren 570S to victory in the GT4 class.

Delighted Mia said: “There were only two real Am’s in the field, so it was just a case of doing the best we could, as I didn’t expect to beat them.”

It didn’t come without drama with the car suffering a damaged wing mirror after being hit at Redgate.

Chasing the Century BMW of Andrew Gordon-Colebrooke, Flewitt pitted from eighth overall in the GT4’s but didn’t shut the car down properly resulting in a stop go penalty,” she admitted.

But Hankey was then pushed out by a GT3 car, through the gravel at Druids.

He managed to recover and although he was seventh in the GT4’s and first ProAm, he was only 0.429 secs off the Century BMW and HHC McLaren who were duelling for fifth, also securing the fastest GT4 lap of the race too.

For the second race Hankey had taken pole position from his qualifying session, 0.027 secs ahead of Jamie Caroline’s Aston Martin.

Although he held his lead from pole initially, the straightline speed of the Aston Martin’s soon told and Caroline had the lead.

But as the pit stop window approached, there was a huge collision at Cascades so Hankey headed for the pits at his first opportunity.

“If there hadn’t been a safety car we would have had a 16.5 secs lead as the others had success penalties to serve, but I rejoined in a GT3 sandwich, just keeping in touch on the,” said Flewitt.

With three cars to recover it started to become obvious that the race would end under the safety car. “I didn’t really get to race, but hey we will take that, a win is a win,” she said.