It was another weekend of high drama, as the GB3 Championship continued at Donington Park. Aside from the obvious headlines of three new winners, here’s some of the other things worth pointing out from the latest event of the season.
Browning rescues his weekend
Hitech GP’s Luke Browning endured one of the most difficult weekends of his career at Donington Park, and yet still came away from the event just a point from the championship lead. The drama started with a heavy crash at the Old Hairpin caused by a broken track rod after a kerb strike in Friday’s second test session, but his team worked wonders to reassemble the car’s front end to somehow get him back on track just a couple of hours later. The team were left with another rebuild job 24 hours later when Browning was caught up in the first lap scuffle between Joel Granfors and Matthew Rees, as the avoiding action left him bouncing wildly over the grass and into the barriers. On Sunday, things finally improved as he claimed a second place, just behind winner Max Esterson, which allowed him to retake the championship lead. The lead was lost again in the final race, despite a charge from 16th on the grid to ninth - his best showing yet in a reverse grid contest. Given the points lost in the first race, this was a great salvage effort from the title contender.
Could Nick Gilkes have joined his sister Megan as a Donington winner?
What could have been for Hillspeed’s Nick Gilkes… steering damage picked up at the start of qualifying meant he missed most of the session, but incredible work from his team meant the broken element was changed in the pit lane and the Canadian was back out for the final moments of the vital session. Despite missing out on the usual tyre warm up preparation, Gilkes’ one flying lap was just 2.5 seconds away from pole, and crushingly, a scant three hundredths of a second away from the 103% marker that would have given him reverse grid pole for the final race. Given his meteoric progress in that contest from 22nd on the grid to 12th, just imagine what may have been possible had he started from the front!
Esterson’s best weekend yet continues rapid improvement
There are good weekends, and then there are great weekends. The latter was certainly the case for Douglas Motorsport’s Max Esterson, who almost doubled his entire points score from the first two weekends in just one event at Donington Park. The New Yorker is making massive progress as he continues his adaptation from Formula Ford: after scoring 21 points at Oulton Park and 53 at Silverstone, he accumulated 71 at Donington Park to shoot up to third in the championship standings. His first victory in the series was just rewards from a weekend where he looked very much the form driver, well clear in testing and then taking pole for race two as well. He’s just 23 points from the summit of the championship, and for the Red Bull-backed driver, it looks like he really has been given wings!
Voisin does exams and then wins
Carlin’s Callum Voisin had enjoyed a decent start to life in single-seaters up until now, but he really came on strong at Donington Park. The Ginetta Junior graduate qualified third on the grid for race one, his best qualifying result yet, and took full advantage of the first lap carnage to shoot into the lead, which he turned into a maiden GB3 triumph, and Carlin’s first of the season. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, as the British-Swiss contender missed a third of the pre-event testing sessions owing to exams; Spanish on Thursday morning and Chemistry on Friday. Perhaps that, then, is the secret to success. A bit of Spanish on Thursday, número uno on Saturday! After this sort of performance, he’ll have his ion the prize for the rest of the year for sure. And that’s enough puns from us…
Carlin jump up the team standings, which is every bit as close as the driver rankings
Never, ever write off the boys and girls in blue! Carlin headed into the Donington Park rounds in fourth place in the teams’ championship standings and 33 points off the top. But a sensational weekend at Donington meant they claimed 121 points across their two best finishes in each race, with their results including the first team 1-2 finish of the season with Voisin winning race one ahead of teammate Roberto Faria. But it’s very close at the top of the standings here too, with just three points separating Carlin and Hitech GP, with Elite Motorsport and Fortec within 21 points as well. Just goes to show, you can throw all the challenges of a new car at these teams, and they’ll still come out of the blocks evenly matched!
Christodoulou’s constant progress
Arden newcomer Nico Christodoulou made excellent progress throughout the event at Donington Park, improving his lap times by over 3.7 seconds from the first test session into qualifying. The first time he sat in the car was in Thursday’s first test session, in which he was 20th and three seconds away from the pace. He then halved that deficit in the next session, posting the 17th quickest time, 1.6s seconds away. By the third test he was little over a second off top spot and cracking the top-10, and come Friday afternoon, that progress had continued to such an extent that he was fifth fastest and only half a second off! He maintained that time gap in his first qualifying session too, and you get the feeling that with a bit more seat time, the Canadian could be a serious contender at the future rounds he’s able to compete in.
You can’t beat GB3 for close action!
Throwing a new car into the mix with a big intake of new drivers with varying levels of experience, and a little bit of field spread could have been forgiven, but blimey, the teams and drivers have got on top of things quickly! Take Donington Park qualifying as an example, just two tenths of a second covered the top six drivers on the grid, all from different teams, with the top-10 being just over half a second apart! But a second covering the top-17?! Yep, just 1.073s covered pole sitter Joel Granfors and David Morales in 17th! No wonder we’ve had eight different winners from the nine races so far. Show us a more competitive grid than this, we dare you!