Sandy Mitchell and Adam Balon won British GT’s three-hour Silverstone 500 race on Sunday, sharing a Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.
Mitchell resisted the best efforts of Marvin Kirchhofer in the closing stages after sweeping around the No. 88 McLaren 720S GT3 as it emerged from its final pit stop.
Kirchhofer came up just half a second short of his fellow brand factory driver Mitchell, who duly became the first two-time winner of the blue riband British GT event.
Balon started the race from pole after Mitchell topped qualifying, and remained out front as three Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos came to blows behind him on the opening lap.
West in the Garage 59 McLaren ended the first stint in third place, behind Morgan Tillbrook’s McLaren and leader Balon.
The upper hand swapped between Barwell and Garage 59 during the middle portion as their Pro-Am driver lineups cycled through, but a consistent penultimate stint from Balon followed by Mitchell’s pace brought the Lamborghini out ahead for the run to the line.
Behind the lead battle, Nick Moss and Joe Osborne took third in their Optimum Motorsport McLaren, ahead of the Silver-Am class winning Redline Racing Lamborghini duo of Alex Malykhin and James Dorlin.
Jonny Adam and his 2018 British GT co-champion Flick Haigh completed the top five in a 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG, for Adam’s first GT3 race in anything other than an Aston Martin.
Aston stalwart Darren Turner and his Newbridge Motorsport co-driver Matt Topham claimed GT4 class honors in an Aston Martin Vantage GT4.
A difficult qualifying session saw the team starting from sixth place but a solid opening stint from Topham saw him deliver the Aston Martin to co-driver Darren Turner in P4. With the cars in front being Silver/Silver cars they were all subject to pit stop penalties which didn’t apply to the Pro-am Aston Martin team.
Steller Motorsport showed fantastic pace in qualifying but couldn’t convert into the race after a first lap spin dropped them right down the order. The team really fought back hard, again showing great pace working through the field. The team came home on the podium but with obvious thoughts of what could’ve been if the spin didn’t happen.
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