Overview of Round 3 at Donington, Dunlop Endurance Championship
Car 46 INGSport BMW Z4 GT3

After a brief interlude since Round 1 at Silverstone, INGSport arrived at Donington for round 3 on Friday evening. This round was particularly exciting for us as we were joined by Ryan Lindsay as 3rd driver. Ryan is an experienced and astute race driver and MSA instructor who, despite having never driven the Z before Saturday, adapted very quickly to the Z’s chassis. A true talent.

Saturday morning dawned with glorious sunshine, but the outlook was fairly grey. Free practice in the morning gave Ryan a chance to get to grips with the set-up of the car but an oily track hindered a solid practice run. All 3 drivers put in some good qualifying times with Ian Lawson securing INGSport’s P8 position on the grid despite some technical issues that surfaced.(intercom systems and dash issues playing up) which were addressed in the down-time between quali and the race.

The team enjoyed a great lunch in the Britcar hospitality tent – many thanks to all the Britcar catering team for being so attentive and providing such great food.

Overall the race was a mix of fortunes for many teams with gearbox problems, punctures, fuel issues and safety cars being the order of the day. Unfortunately our start to the race was not our finest. During the parade lap, Ian experienced a simple but annoying gearbox issues resulting in him pitting whilst the others were beginning the line-up. The brief pit stop then forced a pit lane start pushing us to the back of the grid after the lights went out. What we thought had been resolved occurred again during Ian’s first lap which forced yet another pit stop and this time it pushed us back 5 laps behind the leaders. Once corrected the car ran faultlessly and Ian started to claw back some places. Ryan’s middle stint proved his worth as he was the fastest driver on track and his consistent and admirable efforts pushed us up to P8. Kevin’s “showstopper” stint put INGSport into a finishing P6 and 3rd in class. The Z4 lap times proved that a podium finish had definitely been on the cards had so much time not been lost – our fastest lap was a low 1.32 and the finishing podium order was 1.29 / 1.32 / 1.33. Nevertheless, Saturday’s race at Donington was a great example of how well our 3 drivers worked as a team. Despite some glitches, INGSport persevered, as they always do, and managed to win some class points.

We were thrilled to have Ryan Lindsay with us on Saturday. He added great energy to the team and we hope that it’s not the last you’ll see him racing with INGSport. We would also like to thank Claire Hedley for her dedication in shaping Britcar into what it has become – keep up the fantastic work. Thank you to everyone who came along to the garage to support INGSport and to all those taking incredible action shots of the Z – if you’ve uploaded them onto social media please do tag us and let us know that they’re there.

INGSport won’t be at the next round at Thruxton (apologies!) – we have a very busy schedule in July and are focusing all of our efforts on other events. In the next few days we will be providing more details on what we will be up to and how you can get involved.