This meeting, held at Croft on the weekend of 7/8 May, was a double header with an hour race on both Saturday and Sunday and was for GT3 class cars only, as the GT2 cars had been playing with the big boys at the FIA GT round at Magny Cours the week before.

Qualifying was held on the Saturday morning in dry conditions with the Damax 360s quickest of the Ferraris, with Marco Attard taking 7th place and Jamie Smyth securing 8th place on the grid for Race 1. The Lester/Allan Simonsen United Christian Broadcasters' 360 was in 12th, just ahead of the Phil Burton/Ian Flux JMH run car, with the David Dove Racing 360 of David Dove/Jim Bickley in 15th. In second qualifying for Race 2, the Lester/Simonsen 360 was the quickest Ferrari in P2. Ian Flux secured 5th place, despite a very tired engine which was down on compression, burning oil and overfueling. Nick Adams was in 7th place and Miles Hulford 9th place for Damax, with the Dove/Bickley car in 13th.

By lunchtime on the Saturday, the weather had become more changeable with a strong cold wind and the threat of rain showers. After a few laps, light rain had started to fall and about this time Smyth lost the ABS on his car. This is pretty challenging in the dry, let alone in the rapidly-developing damp conditions! This caused him a few moments until he spun off the circuit on the exit of the Sunny Out corner, hitting the barriers backwards with some severity. This retired the car and left Attard to uphold Damax team honour and he handed over to Adams for the last half-hour whilst in 7th place. Adams, despite considerable pressure, brought the car home 3rd.

Burton started in the JMH car in the dry, and handed over to Flux in 7th. Just then, the safety car came out for Smyth's accident and Flux got on the wrong side, one lap down, but chased hard & got up to 4th, whereopun, the heavens opened a couple of laps from end and he slithered to the finish on slicks, in 4th place just behind Adams.

Dove/Bickley finished 14th, but the Ferrari honours went to Lester/Simonsen. Simonsen took over from Lester after the Safety Car period, finding himself in ninth position. Towards the end of the race, he gained two places in one lap and raced through to a fine second place.

Back in the paddock, the Damax mechanics turned their attention to repairing their damaged car, which need considerable reshaping and replacement of various body panels to restore it to race-worthy condition. Excessive noise had seen the cramming of 36 boxes of Brillo pads into the silencer boxes of both cars!

Sunday dawned bright and sunny with little indication of the weather to follow that afternoon. With half-an hour to go before the race at 13.30, the sky darkened and with a clap of thunder, the most amazing hailstorm proceeded to cover the ground in hail and ice. As the hail eased, the BGT paddock turned into impromptu snowball fights between rival teams. Only in England in the spring! A half hour delay ensued as the track was swept to clear the accumulation of ice from around the circuit and eventually the GT grid gathered in the assembly area, with some teams choosing intermediate tyres which was ultimately to turn out to be the wrong choice.

Flux was one who opted for intermediates, the choice proving costly as at the start it began raining hard again. He did three 360° spins and returned to the pits for a lengthy stop to switch to wets - the car not being fitted with centre-lock wheels. Hulford and Adams started for Damax and the former made a great start, which saw him move up from 9th on the grid to overtake the latter to be in 4th place by the 3rd lap. For the next 30 mins he keep up the pace and brought the car in to handover to Smyth still in 4th place after letting Adams through, on team instructions, just before the pitstop .

A tidy handover saw Smyth regain the race in 3rd place due to other team pitstops, which he then went on to hold until the end, despite a lot of pressure from a couple of Porkies. Attard took over from Adams for the last half-hour of their race and did a sterling job of fending off pressure from the Teutonic hordes, and he put Smyth under pressure in the last couple of laps, finishing 0.7 sec behind in 4th place. For Smyth and team-mate Hulford (at just 17 years old) this was a very special result. These two podiums were a good and well-deserved result for the team after a fraught weekend.

After Flux re-joined the race on wet tyres he pressed on and unlapped himself, handing over to Burton in 12th place, who did well to finish 10th. Dove/Bickley came home a good 7th, but Simonsen was another to suffer from choosing intermediate tyres, as he spun off on the first lap. Despite this, Simonsen and team-mate Lester recovered to bring their 360 home in 12th place.

Next Round: 21/22 May, Knockhill.

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Hulford/Smyth had an off in R1, but claimed a great podium in R2

Burton/Flux did well despite engine problems and a big spin

The English Spring!

The Damax boys did well to sort this lot out

In R2, wets, not inters were the thing to have...

...as R1 2nd place team Simonsen/Lester found out to their cost

Attard/Adams scored a 3rd and a 4th

pics by Damax & British GT