British GT returned from its lengthy summer break with its yearly visit to the glorious Brands Hatch GP circuit at the weekend.

The series has boasted huge entries for each of its rounds this year, but the entry list saw some extra entries from teams wanting to race on the historic circuit with the countries best GT3 teams.

31 GT machines took to the track throughout the practice sessions with the Trackspeed Demon Tweaks Porsche of the returning, Nick Tandy and David Ashburn topping the time sheets. On combined practice times, Tandy’s quickest lap was half a second quicker than any of the competitions, but the rest of the field was tightly bunched on the time sheets, with the rest of the top 10 within the next half second!

A similar story applied to the GT4 cars, with all 10 of the lower-spec machines, covered by just a few seconds. This all set the stage for a very interest qualifying session.

With the British GT style qualifying, the 1 lap, single driver speeds were not the only thing that would contribute to the grid order which rendered the practice positions useless as a form book for the ensuing qualifying sessions – Grid positions are decided on the combined best lap from both the Professional and Amateur drivers from each team.

This culminated in the reigning champions, Jonny Adam and Andrew Howard taking pole position in their Beachdean Aston Martin. Lining up behind them were both of the Trackspeed Porsches and both of the Oman Racing Aston Martins, but crucially, the Trackspeed Porsche of Tandy and Ashburn were the slowest of the chasing 4, lining up 5^th on the grid after such a strong showing in practice.

Beachdeans success continued with their GT4 Aston Martin which took the GT4 pole in the hands of Ross Wylie and Jake Giddings.

Fortunes would change for Beachdeans GT3 efforts. Once the main race got underway, their Aston Martin struggled with brake problems which they suffered from in the morning warm up.

This would see the car eventually drop to 10^th in the early laps in their hope the issue would resolve itself, but before it could, the car would spin, falling to 18^th. This left the team’s hopes of victory with their GT4 entry. Which upon the start, lost the class lead but very quickly resumed its position out front. Through pit stops and driver changed, they managed to pull out a commanding lead from the chasing pack and take home the class victory.

Beachdean’s misfortune opened up the lead position for Ahmed Al-Harthy in the first of the Oman Racing Astons, but was hounded by Jon Minshaw, who was flying the flag for the Trackspeed team. They managed to gap the pack for the first third of the race, matching each other times, but their lead was short lived with a short spell of safety cars right before the pit stop window opened.

Upon the restart, pit stops and driver changes ensued, in which Minshaw blinked first, pitting a lap earlier than the Oman Aston, but this was to prove crucial. Once Al-Harthy had handed over to Michael Caine, the duo had fallen behind the Trackspeed Porsche, which was now piloted by Phil Keen.

Keen would make the most of the clear track and would pull a comfortable lead back to the Oman Aston, but it was the other Trackspeed Porsche which had now found itself behind the pair, and now in the hands of the highly experienced, Nick Tandy. Tandy would pass Caine shortly after the stops, setting his sights on his team mate.

The second Oman Aston of Rory Butcher was now on a charge, catching the sister car which has just relinquished 3^rd.

The battle behind saw Alexander Sims stalking the Ferrari of Matt Griffin for 5^th position. Sims would eventually claim the position from Griffin toward the end of the race, just before the Astons of Alex McDowell and Tom Onsole-Cole would catch the 458 in the final laps.

The star due of Chris Hoy and GT Academy winner turned GP3 racer, Jann Mardenborough could only managed an 11^th place finish following a troubled race in the Nissan GTR GT3.

As both Trackspeed and Oman Racing found them catching themselves for the podium positions, questions were being asked of if any team orders may interrupt what was looking to be last laps shoot outs between team mates for podium spots.

With minutes to go, disaster struck for Phil Keen as he was hit with a puncture, handing the lead to the pressuring Tandy. After pitting for a fresh set of tyres, Keen would rejoin down in 9^th which was a crushing blow to Trackspeed who were sitting pretty for a 1-2 finish.

But the inter-team battles were not done with there – Butcher had now caught his Oman Racing team mate, Caine. Team orders were clearly not in operation as Caine fended of Butcher’s attempts in the closing stages and only just beat Rory Butcher to the line by a tenth of a second, for second place.

The follow 6 cars were covered by a measly 20 seconds which just proves the strength of the British GT field, after a demanding 2 hour endurance round the undulating Grand Prix circuit.

British GT is back in just a couple weeks for its final round of the year at Donington Park.