Optimum Motorsport Aston Martin are celebrating tonight after Jonny Adam and Flick Haigh won the overall British GT championship with fourth place at the Donington Decider.
Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw, who needed to win and hope that Haigh and Adam finished lower than seventh to win the championship, won the race after Nicki Thiim in the #11 TF Sport Aston was given a late time penalty to finish second.
The first stint of the race was dominated by Minshaw, who twice built a gap over teammate Sam De Haan in the other Barwell Lamborghini.
De Haan was a capable rear gunner as he tried to slow the whole field down to leave Haigh, who had a 20s success penalty after victory last time out at Brands Hatch, in danger of falling outside the top six.
That plan unravelled when Mark Farmer in the #11 Aston Martin passed De Haan, before Andrew Howard in the #99 Beechdean Aston Martin and Chris Bunscombe in the RJNÂ Nissan collided and cost themselves time, before Iain Loggie in the #7 Bentley also fell by the wayside.
Rick Parfitt climbed from last to second in possibly his last stint in British GT by the time he handed the #1 Bentley over to Ryan Ratcliffe, and Ratcliffe was to become a spoiler for Adam in the second stint of the race.
Adam had left the pits in fifth, behind Ratcliffe, and the two scrapped for 15 minutes before Yelmer Buurman in the ERC Mercedes overtook the pair of them in a matter of corners.
Adam took advantage of Buurman’s move on Ratcliffe to finally breach the Welshman’s aggressive defences and cruise to a trouble-free third British GT crown.
Nicki Thiim took ten seconds out of Keen in the Lamborghini before forcing his way past late on, but the win was taken away from him when he fell foul of track limits.