The Team Modena Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 made a stunning Avon Tyres British GT Championship debut on Sunday (June 3rd) at Norfolk's Snetterton circuit, finishing fourth overall in the two-hour race and smashing the circuit lap record. The result highlighted the potential of the car - which ran as high as second overall in the race despite dropping to the rear of the field avoiding a spinning rival on the opening lap.

A troubled Saturday saw driver pairing Adam Jones and Rob Wilson limited in their track time, only completing handful of laps and qualifying 14th on the 22-car grid. A superb effort by the team saw the gearbox issues that had dogged the car sorted for race day, and Jones was able to hint at the potential of the brand-new Lamborghini with quickest time in the early morning warm up.

In the race Jones had to go off the circuit on the opening lap as another car spun in the first corner, but from then on he rapidly moved up the order, frequently the quickest car on the track, and moved into second place on lap 29. With a clear track he was really able to explore the Gallardo's performance, and next lap took an amazing 1.5 seconds off the GT3 lap record for the 1.9-mile circuit. Jones pitted when the Safety Car came out for an incident, but a problem with the car's wheel nuts kept them stationary for longer than intended, and Wilson rejoined in eighth. In the final hour of the race he was able to bring the Gallardo through to fourth place - just missing out on a podium finish on Team Modena's debut in the competitive series.
 

"We are over the moon with how today has gone," said Team Principal Graham Schultz. "I was just happy to have the car on the grid, but to take fourth and walk away with the lap record as well really shows the potential of the Gallardo. It has been a good performance all round, we had two new drivers in for this race and they did really well, plus we had to split our team between here and the Le Mans test day."

"I practically had to do a u-turn round another car on the grass at the start," explained Jones. "I saw him spin, then he came back to the inside where I was aiming for. After that I had to drive my way through the field, but the car felt really good, and to do that lap time when we managed so little running shows there is much more to come from it. We got the car to the end of the race, and showed we have reliability."

"We had a good race, Adam was drove really well," said Wilson. "The pit stop talk a bit longer than we would have hoped, but it was the first one for the tam with this car and the team have worked really hard this weekend and deserved the result, it proves the faith that Graham had in this car."