By Paul Evans
Seb Morris’ frustrating British GT Championship season continued last weekend at Donington Park, when the Wrexham-born driver could only muster a seventh place finish.
With an unfavourable ‘Balance of Performance’ ruling applied to his Bentley Continental GT3, Morris and team-mate Rick Parfitt Jnr were at a disadvantage as they tried to challenge the front-running Aston Martins and Lamborghinis, although they did everything possible to deliver a wholly professional showing in the two-hour encounter.
“We were hampered from the moment we got to the track unfortunately,” said Morris. “It was one of those horrible feelings – the car JRM gave us felt really good and handled well in the first two sectors, but we just had no speed.
“We were down in all the speed traps and anything we could do in the first two sectors, we lost it all in the third sector. Qualifying was hard work and the race was tough, it’s frustrating as everyone is working very hard but we’ve been held back by a bad BOP.”
Qualifying on Saturday set the scene for the weekend really with Parfitt Jnr lapping ninth fastest in the ‘Am’ run – a time of 1m28.530 seconds – before 23-year old Morris was eighth quickest in the subsequent ‘Pro’ session with a lap of 1m27.371 seconds. The combined average of their best times resulted in a fifth row start for the race.
Parfitt Jnr took the first stint of the 120-minute encounter from 10th on the GT3 grid, and had moved up to sixth by the time he came into the pits to hand the car over to Morris at the mid-distance driver-change pit stop. The BRDC Superstar and Motorsport UK Team UK driver joined the track in eighth position, with two GT3 cars yet to stop, although a fire related issue with the No.96 Aston Martin in the pits elevated the Bentley into seventh place.
Onto his first flying lap Morris held seventh, before then climbing into sixth ahead of the No.72 Lamborghini that pitted after the JRM entry. Sixth then became fifth, at the expense of the No.2 Aston Martin of Mark Farmer which also pitted a couple of laps after the Bentley.
With 50 minutes to go and the order having settled following the mandatory driver changes, Morris was fifth and just under 10 seconds adrift of his next target, Dennis Lind’s Lamborghini Huracan, but the Welshman also had Phil Keen’s Huracan right behind and pressuring heavily.
Pushing as hard as possible, despite giving away significant speed to the Lamborghinis, Morris was eventually passed by Keen and he then fell into the clutches of the next challenger. Driving inch-perfect lines, and trying to make the Bentley as wide as possible, Morris continued in sixth but with 20 minutes to go he was edged back to seventh position where the JRM car stayed to the conclusion.
British GT now heads into a four-week break ahead of round seven of the season, the annual overseas race at Spa-Francorchamps, which will take place on Sunday 21 July. Kicking off a very important week in Belgium for Morris, just days later he will make his first ever race appearance as an official Bentley ‘works’ driver during the 24 Hours of Spa on 27/28 July.