The new GB3 Championship season is just days away, and as the Silverstone season opener quickly approaches, here's a run down of some of the new features you may notice in the coming year.
Lap records set to be smashed
The Tatuus MSV GB3-025 cars have all received a comprehensive upgrade over the winter. A new high torque 2.4 litre, four cylinder, normally aspirated Mountune engine is the headline addition which has resulted in better acceleration and corner exits.
Aerodynamic revisions and chassis improvements have also been applied to each car, with the end result being a package that has reduced lap times by an average of two seconds pre-season. That number is likely to be even bigger this weekend should weather conditions allow; Deagen Fairclough's fastest time in testing at Silverstone around a month ago was over 2.4 seconds quicker than the best time from last year. Expect new benchmarks!
Minutes, not laps
For many years, all GB3 races had run to a time or lap duration, with the race ending whenever one of those elements had been reached. Going forward, each GB3 race will now run solely to 25 minutes in duration, without a lap equivalent. This means that the chequered flag will be shown once the leader crosses the finish line for the first time after the race clock has hit zero.
New car numbering system
Matching series higher up the ladder, GB3 car numbers have been allocated according to each team's final championship position in the previous year. This means that as reigning champions, Rodin Motorsport will run cars one (Maxim Rehm), two (Martin Molnar) and three (Abbi Pulling), with the remaining teams following in their championship position order from 2025. Teams that did not participate in the championship last year (Arden Motorsport and Nitrous Competitions ADM Racing) have been allocated based on the order in which their entries were received.
Should a driver change team during the season, they will not be able to take their number with them, and will simply inherit a number already allocated to their new team.
Team personnel restrictions in the pit lane
To further monitor costs and for safety improvements, the number of representatives of each team in the pit lane will be restricted.
Each car will be entitled to five operational members of staff, one of which must also be the ‘controller’, who will be responsible for the safe release of the vehicle in the pit lane.
These five operational staff members in the pit lane will wear a series-issued GB3 armband to identify their role.
Driver identification
As a way of making driver identification easier, the onboard cameras, located above the roll hoop of each car, will have different colours to identify each driver.
The entrant’s car with the lowest car number will be black, the car with the second lowest car number will be fluorescent yellow, and the car with the third lowest car number will fluorescent red.
As an example, the line-up for Hitech can be identified as follows:
4, Jin Nakamura - black camera
5, Yuhao Fu, yellow camera
6, Deagen Fairclough, red camera