Sims storms to Rockingham pole

Alexander Sims laid down the gauntlet with a lap four tenths faster than anybody else to earn pole position for Round 3 of the British GT championship at Rockingham. One of only two drivers to get under the 1:23s barrier, Sims and defending champion Marco Attard combined to set an aggregate time of 2:46.786 in their Barwell Motorsport/ Ecurie Ecosse BMW, with Beechdean Aston Martin pair Jonny Adam and Andrew Howard completing the front row for tomorrow’s two-hour race.

There was no stopping Sims in qualifying at Rockingham (Jakob Ebrey).

A solid banker lap from leading Silver Cup entrant Ahmad Al-Harthy and Daniel Lloyd put the Motorbase Aston Martin firmly in contention in third place, with TF Sport’s Matt Bell and Derek Johnston fourth and Rory Butcher and Liam Griffin fifth in the sister Motorbase machine.

On his return to the circuit where he won in the Ginetta GT4 SuperCup last year, Northern Irishman Andrew Watson set the quickest lap during the Am session, but reigning GT4 champion Ross Wylie was unable to match his pace and will start seventh, ahead of Von Ryan team-mates Euan Hankey and Salih Yoluc.

Having saved up their tyres during practice, last year’s Rockingham winners FF Corse will be disappointed with eleventh on the grid, while Joe Osborne and Lee Mowle faired only marginally better with the same strategy in ninth. However, with rain forecast tomorrow, both will be confident of making progress. 

Fresh from winning the Dunlop 24 Hour race at Silverstone last week, Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn dominated in GT4 with an aggregate time 1.3s faster than the Toyota GT86 of Stefan Hodgetts and Richard Williams. 

This article originally appeared on Motorsport.com.