Elite doubled its Teams’ Championship lead advantage and now sees Adam Smalley heading the GT4 Pro Driver’s standings.
From a team perspective, race weekends do not come much better; 1-2 in qualifying, 1-2 in two of the three races, a total of six podium finishes and two fastest race laps. That said, such was the team’s scintillating form at Thruxton (28-29 Aug), it would have been no surprise to have seen Elite claim nine podium placings in all three races.
Smalley arrived at Thruxton trailing by 36pts in the championship standings but heads to North Yorkshire with a 12pt advantage. He claimed his fourth pole-position of the season for Race 1, going on to record his sixth and seventh wins of the season before netting second place in the reverse grid Race 3 having started sixth. Saturday’s race victory made history for Adam, who was awarded the “Millers Oils Star of the Weekend”, having previously won at the Hampshire circuit in Ginetta Juniors, GT5 and now GT4.
Josh Rattican has now finished on the podium eight times after finishing second to Smalley in Races 1 & 2. Josh, who was denied his first pole of the season by a mere 0.007secs, tried absolutely everything to snatch the lead from Adam and claim a second win of the season but despite the intense pressure, was unable to do so. In the third race, Rattican had contact with another car and retired on the opening lap. He remains third in the standings.
Tom Emson, overall fastest in the combined test sessions on Friday, claimed a solid sixth in Race 1 and was on course for a repeat in Race 2 but was tagged into a spin in the closing stages, Tom recovering well to 10th. In Race 3, “lady luck” finally smiled on Emson who chalked-up his fifth podium of the season with a hard-earned third place – Tom, fourth in the championship, challenging Smalley for second place at mid-distance in a four-car dice.
Eddie Ives, Team Owner & Manager
“As a team we seem to go from strength to strength in GT4 SuperCup with all three drivers performing brilliantly and it’s our aim to continue this trend at Croft and the remaining events at Donington and Brands.
“Our engineers and every team member work incredibly hard and they were duly rewarded with all three cars, once again, claiming podium results in the last event at Thruxton.
“As a team, we’ve scored 22 top-three finishes in the 14 races staged to date – eight of which have been wins – and have three drivers in the top-four of the Driver’s championship. Adam had a near perfect weekend at Thruxton, two wins and a second giving him P1 again in the standings. Josh threw everything at Adam but had to be content with two seconds while Tom, who showed great pace as well at Thruxton, was unfortunate to ‘only’ record one podium.”
