Jonny Adam was full of praise for teammate Flick Haigh after the Optimum Motorsport duo’s win at the British GT two hours of Brands Hatch.
Haigh had to contend with two Safety Car periods – one of them almost 15 minutes – during her stint as she tried to negate the 10s success penalty to be served in the pits.
Adam appreciated the job his Am teammate did for him.
“The pace was great and has been good all year, we had a 12s gap at one point and unfortunately that just went away with the first Safety Car and then obviously with the nasty crash down here.
“Really for Flick there were only four or five flying laps and she showed her pace again to eek out enough of a gap, a seven or eight second buffer, our pitstop was good and we managed just to get in front of Beechdean and Barwell.”
After emerging from the stops second, ahead of all of their Championship rivals, Adam had almost an hour-long battle with the #69 Lamborghini of Jonny Cocker.
“The Lamborghini in front looked strong and that’s their best result of the year so they were desperate for the win, but we’re desperate for the Championship as well, so we were pushing extra to get those extra 10 points.
The Scot is confident ahead of the deciding round at Donnington, where Optimum could be in the lead should an appeal against a 30s penalty from Snetterton be upheld.
“The Aston is normally a good car around Donnington, luckily enough we won there last year with TF so it’s a good package at Donnington. Qualifying is key, we’ve qualified pole for the last two races and that has really helped our momentum, we’re on a roll now with three podiums on the bounce, a second win of the year so we’re going for it at Donnington.”
- Meanwhile, Haigh was delighted with her performance in testing circumstances after twice seeing a significant lead wiped out.
After building a gap of 12.6 seconds before the first Safety Car period, she was over six seconds clear when the second, longer caution was deployed.
When Haigh did come into the pits to hand over to Adam, she was over six seconds clear of Andrew Howard once again.
- “I’m really pleased, you never what can happen even when you’re on pole so to build a lead and then have to do it again was really good, It was all about helping Jonny out and bringing that deficit down by any margin I could. The team, as always performed amazingly in the stops.
I just wanted to make it as easy as possible because it is hard enough with the level of the pros there anyway, and I feel like I did my bit and I am really pleased for me, for him and the whole team.”