Nick and Scott, and the entire Team Parker Racing crew, head into the midway point of the season on a high following their dominant outright GT4 race victory during the showpiece Silverstone 500 last time out – it was both their first win of this campaign, and also their first outright GT4 victory on the road.
The result in the longer, three-hour race netted a bumper haul of points that has elevated Nick and Scott to fourth in the overall GT4 Drivers’ Championship, and third in the GT4 Pro-Am standings. Even with the points lost when the team encountered technical problems from winning positions at both Oulton Park and Snetterton, Nick and Scott are now well within striking distance of the lead in both championships.
This weekend’s two-hour race represents another challenge, with the undulating 2.5-mile Donington Grand Prix loop playing host to a 41-car field, 25 of which will fight it out for the GT4 honours.
After their Silverstone success, Nick and Scott will have to serve an extra 20 seconds stationary during their pit stop. However, because they rank as a Pro-Am pairing, they still have a shot at outright race victory due to the higher-graded semi-pro ‘Silver Cup’ teams having to serve 26 seconds extra of their own by way of equalisation with the Pro-Am runners.
However, Donington is a track that both Nick and Scott like and know well. They were fastest in the pre-season group test there back in March and took a class podium in the race at the venue last season, which sealed their GT4 Pro-Am Championship title.
Regardless of the pit stop success penalty, both Nick and Scott are fired up ahead of Donington, and plan to come out fighting.
Nick says: “I’m really looking forward to Donington and I feel the team is in really great shape at the moment. Dare I say it, but perhaps our luck has finally turned as we had no issues at all at Silverstone and all of the little gremlins that we’ve had this year disappeared. Fingers crossed that holds up!
“Even though we’ve got an extra 20 seconds on our pit stop, that can disappear with a well-timed safety car for us, and anything can happen in this championship. We’ll approach this race like any other – we’ll go out looking to just drive to the race and see where it takes us. Hopefully that can be the top step again.”
Scott adds: “Silverstone was a brilliant result for us and puts us right back in the hunt for the championship, and now we have to keep this run going. From my point of view, I’m going all-out in every race for the rest of the year. We know the car is in a good place at the moment and Nick is driving brilliantly. Endurance racing comes down to consistency and luck. Nick was so consistent at Silverstone and is driving better than ever. Hopefully we’ve had our bad luck so far this year, and those above us in the championship haven’t had theirs yet, so it’s still all to play for.
“The Mercedes-AMG GT4 should be strong at Donington. The lap is all about high- and medium-speed corners, which suit the car. The only downside is that Donington is a track that’s light on tyre degradation, so we won’t have much of an advantage later in the race when the other cars run out of grip. But we were fastest there in pre-season testing, and we’re aiming to be at the top of the timesheets again this weekend.”
The British GT race is scheduled to start at 13:10 on Sunday, June 23. The race will be streamed live via BritishGT’s official website and YouTube channels, with live timing available via tsl-timing.com.
