The Brands Hatch round of the British GT Championship proved to be a testing outing for 16-year-old Patrick Kibble as the #95 driver’s weekend ended with the car retiring on the first lap of the two-hour race.

After positive steps made throughout free practice one, Patrick and his TF Sport team-mate Josh Price leapt up the timing sheets in the second free practice session to sit fourth quickest in the GT4 class ahead of qualifying. Patrick set the fastest lap of the duo, with a 1:33.382s – marking a stellar improvement from the first practice session by over a second.

Patrick went second in the qualifying session, where a best-effort of 1:32.695s saw him again be the fastest driver behind the #95 and with the pair’s timings combined, Josh and the Aston Martin Academy Racing Driver would start Sunday’s race from eighth on the grid.

After a solid start to the weekend on Saturday, Sunday brought a totally different story for Patrick at his home race track. With Josh starting the race for the team, an incident at the rolling start forced the #95 car to retire on the opening lap.

Speaking after the weekend, Kibble said: “The weekend has been a completely mixed bag of emotions. Practice one was good and I knew the areas where we had to improve. We were able to do this, and our performance in the second session was much better. This put me in good stead for qualifying, however, I could not quite get the perfect lap together.

“Unfortunately, the car had to retire almost immediately. It is disappointing but this is what happens in racing sometimes. Despite the result, it was fantastic to have so many members of my family and also my sponsors at the track this weekend. Josh and I are now determined to end the season on a high at Donington!”

Images courtesy of www.pspimages.co.uk