Oulton Park is special. I’ve always loved the circuit, and being the most northern of the circuits we visit during the British GT championship, I jokingly commented that it was my ‘home’ race. It certainly felt like home, and it was great to score some decent points over the bank holiday weekend’s two sprint races.

The circuit is tight and twisty, and it has a great flow to it. Hustling the latest generation of GT3 cars around it is great fun, but overtaking is tricky, which puts even more emphasis on qualifying. With the sprint race grids set by each driver, the pressure is on the whole team to ensure we hit everything perfectly to be in with a chance of a decent result, and that is exactly what Giacomo and the Blackthorn AMR crew did this weekend. The battle for the two pole positions was as close as any I’ve been involved in, across both sessions, and Giacomo really delivered one of his best drives to secure the front row for race 1 to kick the weekend off well.

The fight was definitely there in race trim as well, and we were unlucky (and a bit lucky) in turn 1 as Giacomo made a bid for the race lead. Hard racing, but it was great to be back at the front, where we have shown we should be over the recent events. We rejoined after the stops, holding on to a podium position, and the #7 felt totally planted as we battled to the flag, and broke the race lap record on our way to another top-3 finish.

The second race was as action-packed as an Oulton Park bank holiday race has become known for in recent years. Starting wet, then drying and back to rain meant strategies went out the window, but we stuck to our gameplan, gaining some ground to move up into the podium spots again. Despite another success penalty in the pitstops after the first race, we managed to stay near the front, and another great run by Giacomo in the final stint gave us another great result with P4 overall, and a class podium. That means a fantastic haul of points from the weekend, and no success penalties heading to Spa next month, so the opportunity for another strong weekend.

It was great to be home.

British GT 2025 –

Team: Blackthorn AMR

Car number: #7

Circuit: Oulton Park, UK

Race 1: P3 (P3 Pro-Am)

Race 2: P4 (P3 Pro-Am)