Cadena Motorsport was left to reflect on a continuation of its bad luck after a pit lane penalty led the team to withdraw from the opening Avon Tyres British GT Championship race of the weekend at Thruxton.

The yellow Aston Martin DBRS9 had run well in qualifying to leave Barrie Whight second on the grid and he maintained his place at the start behind the pole-sitting Ferrari of Jeremy Metcalfe.

However, a lengthy Safety Car period meant that the driver changes occurred when the race was under caution – with all of the field pitting together.

With cars littering the pitlane, contact between machines was inevitable, with the Aston in the centre of things as it came together with the #16 Ferrari. That resulted in a penalty for the car that dropped it down the order, and the team then elected to withdraw from the race in protest at what it felt was an unjust punishment.

"The start was exactly what I wanted, or almost exactly what I wanted as I was close to getting the lead from the Ferrari," Whight explained. "I didn't want to lose a place off the grid like I did last year but I held second and was able to keep pace with the leader.

"When the Safety Car came out I got on the radio and told the team I thought it would be a long and then when the pits opened and we were coming up Woodham Hill, I got on the radio again to say that we would need to be careful with the stop as it was going to be busy.

"I tried to make sure that I stayed in the pit box as much as possible without getting blocked in, but we found ourselves trapped by the CRS Ferraris. I'm not saying that was something they did on purpose, but that is how it was.

"We had to try and get round the Ferrari to get out of the pits and there was some contact which meant we ended up getting a penalty and it ruined our race – it was a race we could have won which is really frustrating. After the penalty, it was a pointless exercise and we decided to pull in and retire the car in protest as we were the only team to be given a penalty for what happened.

"The whole thing could have been avoided if they had just delayed opening the pits until the Safety Car went in..."