Silverstone is always a special place to race – the home of British motorsport, the home of the BRDC, and recently the new home of the Aston Martin Formula 1 team. The Silverstone 500 is one of the big ones to be involved with, with a lot of history, so it was the perfect place for us to make our series debut with our new Vantage with Blackthorn and Giacomo.

The team did a great job to give us a strong package going into the weekend. The car felt in a really good place from the initial test sessions, and that gave us a lot of confidence with the new car. Pace was strong in qualifying across both sessions, and I think the top-10 result was probably the best we could extract over the course of the lap. We know there is more time to find, but we had a good baseline, and knew we had a good setup for the race.

A lot can happen in 3 hours, and this race proved that. Weather played a part, but teams showed different strategies from the first lap. We knew we were going to have to roll the dice, and it paid off, with Giacomo running an extended opening stint, which saw him take the lead, and hold his own against seasoned pros, to put us in a really strong position. It was chaotic all the way through, but we were in the fight throughout, and the car felt strong – Silverstone is a good track for the set up on the Vantage, and it was great fun being able to pick off several places in the latter part of the race. We had mixed fortunes with strategy later on – a caution period fell our way, but then we were hit with an unfortunate pitstop penalty – but we moved forwards, and took our chances where we got them. The pace was certainly there, and we took P8 overall, against a 41-car grid, and finished P4 in the Pro-Am class. With invitational cars not scoring, that works out as P6 overall, P3 in class, which scores us some great points for the championship

Overall, despite penalties, it was a really positive weekend, showing the potential of what we can do now with the new car. Looking forward to Donington Park in a few weeks.

British GT Championship 2024 –

Team: Blackthorn AMR
Car number: #87
Race 3: P6 / P3 Pro-Am
GT3 drivers’ championship: 13 points; P9

Pro-Am drivers’ championship: 25.5 points; P7