ALTHOUGH his title defence was not to be, Ian loggie and co-driver Jules Gounon in their 2 Seas Motorsport AMG GT3 Mercedes arrived at the final round with the aim of finishing the season on a high with a win at the famous Donington Park Circuit, writes Ste McNorton.

Thursday's test day allowed the team some great track time as the weather was still good, but come Saturday the storm which had flooded many areas of the surrounding area had left the track very greasy as most of the rubber laid down during previous track action had gone.

Loggie was down in 13th in the first two-hour long practice session but as the track dried and some rubber was laid down, times began to improve.

With qualifying fairly late in the day, the sun was out but the track seemed incredibly slippery with many of the teams overshooting corners everywhere, but both Loggie and Gounon kept things on the black stuff to secure third on the grid.

As the lights went out on the rolling start, Loggie made a decent get away and held position, but after the first few laps he found himself in fifth. Still there was plenty of time to recover.

After eight laps a huge crash brought out the safety car which would see the teams in this state for about 20 minutes while recovery and repairs were carried out.

Once things were back underway Loggie managed to recover really well and was soon in second place.

As the clock struck 14:00 the pit lane was open for the mandatory stops, in came Loggie and out went Gounon, but the 2 Seas team had lost time and dropped back down the field behind a gaggle of McLarens and the two Barwell Lamborghinis.

In typical Gounon fashion he battled back, but come the chequered flag they could only manage fifth place, which was a bit of a disappointing finale.

With the winter test programme now ahead of them, the team will be looking for that improvement in performance over the BMW and McLarens which seems to have stifled the Mercedes somewhat this year.