UAE team Xcel Motorsport joined the GB3 Championship for the first time in 2025, and immediately established itself as one of the series’ top teams.
Xcel won just its fourth GB3 race when Patrick Heuzenroeder triumphed at Zandvoort, and the Australian secured four more podiums as he claimed the runner-up spot in the championship standings, while third place was secured in the teams' classification.
For Team Manager Gary Bonner, the sustained success was just reward for a year that required building work both on and off the track.
“A huge amount doesn’t really cover it, back in February we had an empty workshop, we didn’t have a truck, we didn’t have any cars, we didn’t have a single nut or bolt or anything! So we were literally starting from absolute scratch.
“I think it was four days after picking up the keys to the workshop we collected the first GB3 car and then six days after that we were out on track at Anglesey, it all came fairly thick and fast.
“Mechanics, engineers and myself, we had to get involved in doing other stuff beyond what we would usually call running a race team, silly stuff like building benches, building other bits, all that sort of stuff, just to get us operational. We all had to dig deep and it was well worth it in the end.”
Despite being a new name to the series, several key members of the team were well known to each other, allowing for an easy gelling process.
“We were sort of lucky enough that the majority of us had worked with each other at one time or another, so it wasn’t as if we had to gel as a team. We were already there from the get go.
“We had a few new guys join us and they slotted straight in right away. It certainly helped and having had the experience of doing all various different championships, including GB3, across the board was really helpful.”
With the build-up complete, the next step was to achieve success on track, which they did with a podium for Heuzenroeder at the end of the Silverstone opening weekend, before the Australian’s triumph next time out in the Netherlands.
“It was massive. To be honest, we weren’t expecting it [the win] to come that early, but we seemed to be in a position where we just turned up at Zandvoort, we didn’t do anything particularly special, we’d had a good analysis of the aero side of things, turned up at Zandvoort and we were strong from the get go.
“It was a real shame actually that Jack [Sherwood] unfortunately made a little mistake in qualifying, because when the red flags came out he was P4 or P5 at the time and going quicker, so for sure it would have been his strongest qualifying position of the year. In the end it is what it was and he came back and was strong in the races. I think from the team it was quite a strong showing.”
In his second full year of GB3, Heuzenroeder was recruited to lead the team’s assault on track, and the decision was one that paid off big time, as he established himself as the closest challenger to eventual champion Alex Ninovic.
“Pat, when we said at the start of the year that he was going to spearhead the team, it was because he was a second year driver and he’d had a year’s worth of experience of being in a car with a big amount of downforce.
“At one point he was leading the championship, and that was genuinely on merit. He did a fantastic job but he got taken out of three races [towards the end of the season] which certainly didn’t help. But Alex did the job, right? He did have the most wins and sewed it up one event before the last round, so all credit to him, you can’t take anything away from him at all.
“But it would have been nice to have taken it to the last round having not been taken out of those three races.”
Bonnor also highlighted the work of Heuzenroeder’s teammate Jack Sherwood, a driver he’d previously worked with in British F4, with the Brit proving a crucial asset to the team’s 2025 campaign.
“Jack was obviously coming from F4 so he knew some of the circuits, not all, but the biggest thing for him was being able to utilise the downforce.
“Both drivers got on so so well and certainly the reason why we wanted Jack in the team was because his feedback 99 per cent of the time was absolutely on point, and that continued into this year.
“Even though he might have been a few tenths off Pat during the year at certain stages, and at some points obviously less, and others more, his feedback was always absolutely bang on. So it was really, really important for us to have Jack and he certainly helped us to develop the car, no doubt.”
With a strong debut year now complete, Bonnor hopes that Xcel can now push on and build a line-up capable of challenging for the title again in 2026.
“We came into the championship knowing we needed to hit it hard in the first year to be able to be attractive in the driver market. I’d like to think we’ve achieved that and we’ve proved our worth.
“We’ll have to see what drivers come along and what the line-up looks like, but there’s absolutely no doubt that we’re going to be working even harder over the winter to go one better next year.”