Strong finish to season from Smith & Plowman

Mark Smith and Martin Plowman enjoyed a superb start to the final two-hour race of the year, running comfortably in the fight for the top six before some damage led to a seized door on their McLaren GT3 during their pit stop, and a desperately unlucky penalty then robbed them of an outright top-10 finish.  Regardless of the results, Smith and Plowman head into the winter break having enjoyed a strong 2024 British GT season. Smith and Plowman have also enjoyed a strong run-in, finishing inside the top five in the GT3 Pro-Am class in each of the last two races helping them to ninth in the class championship.

Brands Hatch represented one final chance to push for big scores, Smith made a blinding start to vault from 11th on the grid up to eighth. Even though he lost out to a rival BMW when he was baulked by GT4 traffic around the Druids hairpin, Smith showed consistent pace and was soon duelling with newly crowned Silver-Am champion Shaun Balfe’s Garage 59 McLaren. Balfe went for a lunge into Graham Hill corner but collided with the side of the Paddock McLaren, and that would have consequences when Smith brought the car in for its mandatory stop. As he and Plowman attempted to switch seats, the McLaren’s door jammed shut after the hit, forcing the crew to complete their change via the wrong side of the car, sliding across the chassis from the passenger door. That cost vital time, with Plowman emerging in 10th to rejoin the race. A disrupted second half littered by full course yellow caution periods meant he never really got the chance to attack those in front, and things took a turn when the car was handed a drive-through penalty when Plowman accidentally clipped the rear of a GT4 car in front that had braked unexpectedly heading onto the pit straight. The #9 would finish 11th overall, but that did at least mean the car brought home some points due to some non-scoring guest entries ahead. It also put them fifth in the points-scoring Pro-Am order, which on reflection is a fine result, it just should have been more. 

 Mark Smith from the GT3 team said: “It felt like we put a few things together this weekend and made some really good progress. We struggled a bit with performance in qualifying but the car felt great in the race and I opted for a run down the inside of the first corner this time after the recent bad luck we’ve had being pushed wide avoiding other people’s accidents in recent races, and that worked nicely so I could pick up a few spots. We were going well and set for a real fight until I got the hit on the door, which I didn’t think anything of at first as it didn’t feel like much and the fight overall was really fun. But then the door wouldn’t open at the stop. I was hoping the team could muscle it open, but then I was thinking ‘Ahhhh, man… I gotta go out the other side!’. That was a stretch, to say the least, especially when my radio was still connected and pulling me back in! But you have to laugh. No doubt we deserved more, but I’m not done with this yet and I want to come back, do more testing, and fight for the results we want.”