Video: Mitchell/Balon hold on after race-long British GT battle

Half a second was all that split the winning Barwell Lamborghini from the pursuing Garage 59 McLaren after three hours of flat-out racing at Silverstone that ran uninterrupted for the duration.

As Sandy Mitchell and Adam Balon banished the memories of a tricky British GT season opener at Oulton Park, the pair needed an inch-perfect drive to beat a guesting Marvin Kirchhofer and Alexander West in a race determined by fine margins.

“If we’d lost one or two seconds throughout the whole race then [the win] probably wouldn’t have happened,” said Mitchell, who breathed a sigh of relief when Kirchhofer resumed the race after his third and final stop on lap 68 narrowly behind. Mitchell admitted that he likely wouldn’t have passed Kirchhofer, on four-lap fresher rubber, had he rejoined ahead for the final 35-minute dash. The pair proved so evenly matched that they set identical times on the penultimate tour.

“The McLaren’s straightline speed is pretty strong compared to us as well, so I think it would have been extremely difficult to overtake,” explained the 2020 champion. “I had to defend two or three times, but thankfully he never got side-by-side.”

Mitchell’s stunning qualifying effort, 0.693 seconds faster than anybody in the Pro session, allied with a strong fourth place for Balon, had secured them pole. But Balon soon had fastest Am qualifier Alex Malykhin (Redline Lamborghini) looming large in his mirrors, and the lunge came as they went into Club on lap three. Contact was made and Malykhin was issued a drivethrough penalty, limiting him and James Dorlin to an eventual fourth.

West had started 10th, but ended the first lap third after “one of the luckier starts I’ve seen”. After being rebuffed by Malykhin for second into