Beechdean Motorsport begin British GT season with Silverstone podium!

Beechdean Motorsport began the 2026 British GT Championship with a podium finish after a strong raceday performance at the Silverstone 500.

Drivers Andrew Howard and Ross Gunn finished third in the GT3 Pro-Am category on a day when both made the most of the pace of their Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for three hours of hard racing around Silverstone’s 3.7-mile Grand Prix circuit.

It was a result that owed as much to the Beechdean team’s determination to correct a set-up error in qualifying as to a sensational opening lap by Andrew, who simply tore through the field to establish the #7 Aston Martin as a top-three contender early on.

The team from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, won the series’ GT3 Silver-Am crown last year, but has returned to the leading Pro-Am category for 2026 with Andrew now co-driven by Aston Martin works driver Ross.

This rekindles a partnership that last raced together full-time in British GT in 2023 and that made up 50 per cent of the Beechdean line-up that took a class podium at last year’s 24 Hours of Spa.

Having focused on race set-ups during practice and pre-qualifying – resulting in both drivers setting some of their fastest-ever Silverstone laps – both Andrew and Ross were disappointed to qualify seventh in Pro-Am and 10th overall after hotter-than expected track temperatures left them unable find sufficient bite from their tyres.

Any concerns about a tough race were, however, blown away by Andrew on the opening lap as he surged to third place overall with a series of tenacious passing moves.

Despite a number of awkwardly-timed Full-Course Yellow periods, which were swiftly followed by the emergence of the safety car, both drivers established a fast rhythm and ran inside the top four spots for the majority of the race.

Their hopes of an overall podium were, however, dashed when Andrew was hit by a rival just as he was entering the pitlane for his final pitstop. The resultant spin across the grass and refiring of the V8 engine cost the two-time series champion around 40 seconds and dropped Ross – who climbed in for the final stint – five positions.

With yet more safety-car laps infiltrating the race’s final hour, the green flags waved to resume racing with just seven minutes of the three hours remaining, leaving Ross precious little time to mount a challenge to the cars ahead.

 Sixth overall and third in GT3 Pro-Am was the result; a solid achievement by a duo who did not look like finishing there after qualifying, and one that gives both drivers a useful result to use as a basis for further improvements across the remaining five events.

Andrew and Ross hold second place in the GT3 Pro-Am standings as the overall race-winning car was not points-registered, while Beechdean are fourth in the Teams’ rankings.

Next round: Oulton Park, May 23-25

Andrew Howard said: “Considering where we were after qualifying, finishing on the Pro-Am podium is a strong result. Qualifying was an underperformance – that my lap was 1.3 seconds slower than my best race lap is proof of that – but we were caught out by the higher-than-expected track temperatures and I was caught out by some of the tyre pickup and we didn’t do what we should have. But we’ve rebounded today and had a really good race. Okay so without me being spun around while entering the pits, I think we’d have been fourth overall and second in Pro-Am and maybe, just maybe, squeezed onto the overall podium. We can be pleased with what we’ve achieved.”

Ross Gunn said: “It’s been a great start to the season when you think about the way we progressed with the car from Saturday through to Sunday. Andrew made an amazing start and got us all the way up to third and we could have been fighting for the overall podium if he hadn’t had contact from another car at the last Full-Course Yellow. We didn’t progress that well with the set-up across Saturday and we paid for that a bit with the tyres we had for the race. We’ve learnt from it though, and we’ll be stronger when we get a really hot track later in the year. We did make a lot of forwards progress in the opening stint though, and from there we were in the hunt.”