Fourth win for Nicholas Mee Racing in the GT4 Challenge at Brands – Saturday 27 August

Nicholas Mee Racing clocked up their fourth win in the Aston Martin GT4 Challenge, proudly sponsored by QuickSilver Exhaust Systems at Brands Hatch on Saturday.

Just ten cars made it to Kent for the 9th round of the GT4 Challenge, and wet conditions on Friday's practice meant Saturdays dry qualifying session was a sharp learning curve. Dan de Zille in the NMR car no 12 set the early pace,  with Richard Abra beating his time then parking up. Dan came in for fresh tyres with just 6 mins to go, then went out to post the fastest lap of 49.8 on his last lap despite Richard Abra re-joining the session to chase the time.

In the 90 minute endurance race it was the Nicholas Mee number 12 car, who led the field into Paddock Hill bend and for the first few laps. On lap 5 Richard Abra started to close the gap to the leader and was putting Dan de Zille under some real pressure and with a great move managed to pass Dan going down the inside at Surtees. There were some very closely fought battles all through the field. Dan de Zille and Richard Abra were trading fastest laps with the gap between the two of them being held at a steady 1.5 seconds all the way up to the pit stops.

Disaster struck for Generation AMR when leader Richard Abra pitted to hand over to Mark Poole, Mark hit the brakes for the first time at turn two lost control and went off into the gravel, unfortunately the car was beached and unable to rejoin the race.

Chris Porritt was now leading in car 77 but was yet to pit, he would be handing over to Chris Partridge the BBC presenter and producer of the 6 and 10 o’clock news, this would be his first ever motor race having only taken his ARDS racing license test at Thruxton the week before. This really proves that with a lot of dedication, support and some natural talent you can train to become a racing driver in a very short space of time. Chris had done a fantastic job in testing and the team are extremely pleased with his progress over the weekend.

The Aston Martin Lagonda entry pitted on lap 65 and with Chris Partridge now driving they rejoined in second place. After all the pit stops had been taken it was Dan de Zille in the Nicholas Mee, number 12 car, who now held a commanding lead, Dan was driving on his own for this race and 90 minutes around the Brands Hatch Indy circuit is tough both mentally and physically, but he was pacing himself perfectly.

On lap 76 Chris Partridge in the 77 car pulled off the track and retired with gearbox issues, Denis Tribel was now holding second position in the Stratton Motorsport number 22 car but he was being chased by Alan Bonner who soon passed Denis to take second place, but with Dan de Zille two laps ahead there just wasn’t enough time left for Alan to make inroads into Dan’s lead. Stuart Patterson in the EQ8 Racing number 47 car was fourth and Chris Kemp in the Stratton Motorsport number 91 machine was now fifth.  Dan de Zille took the chequered flag in his first ever solo win for NMR Dan commented "It was an amazing weekend but not quite as easy as it looked!
It was a physically hard race, but probably the most satisfying of my career."

Dan’s result puts the NMR car level on points with the Vantage Racing pairing of Black and Bonner who took their first win at Oulton Park earlier this month. The final round will be at Dijon 10/11 September where Karsten le Blanc will be back in the car also driving solo to decide who takes the title.

Race Result
1.     12 Dan de Zille - Nicholas Mee Racing – 102 Laps

2.     24 Tom Black/Alan Bonner - Vantage Racing– 100 Laps

3.     22 Pierre Mantello/Denis Tribel/Olivier Bouche – Stratton Motorsport – 99 Laps

4.     47 Stuart Patterson/Paul Bartley - Stratton Motorsport – 98 Laps

5.     91 Chris Kemp/Andy Peck - Stratton Motorsport –97 Laps