After making another step forward in the British GT Championship last year, Mark Smith and Paddock Motorsport are looking to prove their pace this season in a push to ‘compete for podiums’.
Paddock Motorsport completed a dual campaign in British GT and GT Cup last year, where Smith took GT3 honours in the latter in a solo program. He is expected to continue building his experience and knowledge in the GT Cup championship this season.
Their British GT pairing of Smith and team founder Martin Plowman will remain unchanged as they once again challenge in their McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.
Speaking to GT REPORT and BMM at the British GT media day at Silverstone, Smith said, “The car is feeling really good, we made some progress with some push out of the car and we started putting in some really decent laps.”
Media day is a valuable opportunity for teams and drivers to prepare for the season ahead, something the American driver highlighted.
He said, “It’s really important. We had some pre-season testing at Portimao but I won’t be able to make the test before Silverstone, so it’s going to be important to set us up on the right foot for that race.”
The pair ended the day with the sixth fastest time in the GT3 class, within a second of the quickest time. This will bring confidence to the team, who look to be in the mix with outfits such as 2 Seas Motorsport and Optimum Motorsport, both regular contenders for podium positions.
An unchanged pairing and dual campaign give the team a strong bank of data, while the drivers have built a solid relationship over several seasons to help push the team forward. Plowman’s experience continues to play a key role in Smith’s development, and together they form a well-established pairing heading into this season.
Smith said, “We’re lucky because we have been working together for a while. We have lots of old data so we can compare how things look this year to how they looked in previous years and just work on the areas where I can gain pace. It’s really helpful to have all that timing from the other years for sure.”
When discussing expectations for the season, he said, “It’s really tough to say. There’s a big field this year so it’s just so difficult to predict.”
“Right now it looks like our pace is decent and at the end of last year we had one race where we had third in the bag but made a bad tyre decision, so we’re starting to be able to compete for podiums just on pace, but we’ll have to prove it this year.”
Their 2026 campaign will get underway at the British GT season opener at Silverstone for the 500 race weekend on April 25th–26th.
