26/05/26

ROUND 2: OULTON PARK RACE 1

Revie Lake's second British GT round began with the 16-year-old facing an entirely different challenge from the one he had encountered at Silverstone.

Revie Lake battles back at Oulton Park after difficult start

A difficult qualifying weekend forced Revie Lake and Blake Angliss onto the back foot at Oulton Park, but the young McLaren pairing refused to give up.

The three-hour endurance format was gone.

In its place were two flat-out 60-minute sprint races at Oulton Park.

That meant there was little room for strategy to rescue a difficult starting position.

Every lap mattered.

And Lake and teammate Blake Angliss had plenty of work to do.

A steep learning curve

Oulton Park's narrow, undulating layout is one of the most demanding circuits on the British GT calendar.

For Lake, still only in his second season of real-world racing, it was another important step in his education.

The #84 Mahiki Racing McLaren ultimately finished 4th in GT4 in Race 1, completing 32 laps and ending the race one lap behind the GT4 class winner.

The result was not what the young driver had hoped for.

But there was more to the weekend than the final classification.

Fighting against the odds

The race was won in GT4 by Century Motorsport's Branden Templeton and Jack Collins, while Lake and Angliss battled further down the order.

For Lake, the most valuable part of the weekend was the experience of dealing with a sprint race where there was no time to settle into a rhythm.

A three-hour race allows a driver to recover.

At Oulton, there was nowhere to hide.

Every position had to be fought for immediately.

That was precisely the kind of experience Lake needed.

Another chance was coming

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Oulton weekend was that Lake did not have to wait weeks for another opportunity.

British GT's sprint format meant Race 2 would take place later the same day.

And that gave the teenager a chance to turn the lessons from the opening race into something more positive.

There was still another 60 minutes of racing to come.