Hedley wins rain-affected GB3 race two at Oulton Park

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

James Hedley took a maiden GB3 triumph as rain caused chaos in the second encounter at Oulton Park.

The Arden VRD driver, who is still working on a budget for the full season, finished 1.528 seconds ahead of Rodin Carlin’s Callum Voisin, with race one winner Joseph Loake third.

Spots of rain before the cars headed to the grid resulted in a wet race being declared but, with the track still mostly dry, all drivers lined up on slick tyres.

Rain intensified on the first of two formation laps, with Fortec Motorsport’s Jarrod Waberski spinning out and unable to take his place on the grid’s fourth row. Several cars dived into the pits, and Hillspeed’s Gerrard Xie struck the barriers entering the pitlane and damaged his front-left suspension.

Officials opted to delay the start by five minutes, with the slick-shod runners able to to change to wet tyres on the grid, and a torrential downpour then followed before the race got underway.

Loake led away from pole, with Hedley climbing from fourth to second ahead of Voisin in the spray, and then showed strong pace to immediately put pressure on Loake.

On the second of 12 scheduled laps, Hedley drew alongside the JHR driver into Knickerbrook and then again approaching Druids, before switching to the inside on the exit and completing the move into Lodge.

He then pulled out more than a 2s lead as Loake held off Voisin behind. In the closing stages Voisin repeated Hedley’s earlier overtake by cutting back to the inside of Loake exiting Druids and taking second.

He started to eat into Hedley’s lead, but there was not enough lap left for him to catch up, with the race’s time limit expiring.

Douglas Motorsport’s Max Esterson ran fourth throughout, while Michael Shin was fifth for Hitech GP, having made up eight places on the opening lap and then benefitting from a mistake from JHR’s Rees to gain another spot.

Rees was one of many victims of the slippery conditions, flying off the road at Cascades and he eventually came home 11th.

Shin’s team-mate Souta Arao made a slow getaway from third and finished sixth, with Carlin’s Costa Toparis seventh on his second GB3 start.

Douglas driver Tymek Kucharczyk was eighth, while Carlin’s John Bennett recovered from 17th on the grid to ninth ahead of Nico Christodoulou.

Hitech’s Alex Dunne was involved in an early collision at Knickerbrook with Arthur Rogeon, who damaged his front wing, and the reigning British Formula 4 champion then had an excursion at Cascades and ended up 12th.

David Morales, Lucas Staico, Oliver Stewart and Shawn Rashid all spun off in the rain, the latter crashing into the barriers late on at Druids.

Race result (10 laps)