DANIEL Brown has vowed to fight on in his British GT Championship title bid despite suffering heartache at Zandvoort.

The Billericay driver overcame a five-place grid penalty to take second place in race one at the Dutch track.

But contact in the second race forced him to retire midway through the race and leave Brown 21 points adrift in the championship standings with one race remaining.

“I’m 21 points off the top with 37.5 available, so there’s still a mathematically a chance although it is an outside one,” said the 888Optimum BMW driver.

“We are still going to go for it and are in a position where we can take a few more risks.

“The guys are head of us will be playing it a bit safer and perhaps we can pressure them a bit.

“But I think to win we need one of the top three not to finish and the others to get very low places, while we need to win, so it’s going to be tough.”

Brown and his co-driver Steve Tandy qualified third for the first race at Zandvoort but were one of seven cars who were given a five-place grid penalty for not completing three flying laps in qualifying.

The team pitted during rain and did not go back out, and while Brown said the rules were a grey area the team had to accept the punishment.

Tandy pitted in fifth place and handed over to Brown who duelled for the lead before finising second, 0.150 seconds adrift of winners Ahmed Al Harthy and Michael Caine.

Brown qualified ninth for the second race on a drying track and was with a gaggle of other GT3 cars trying to get past a slower GT4 vehicle.

The two other GT3s got by but Alex Osborne closed the door on Brown as he was overtaking. Brown made it back to the pits but was forced to retire after 15 laps.

“The first race was fantastic and we might have won had it not been for the penalty,” added Brown. “With the second race it was a misunderstanding, although it was annoying. I spoke to him afterwards and he said it was my fault but I said a small lift would have let me through.”

The final race is at Donington Park in early October, although Brown will be racing at Spa later this month in the Masters Historic Touring Cars race.