Kucharczyk wins from pole in GB3’s opening Spa race

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Hitech GP’s Tymek Kucharczyk took his second GB3 victory in a damp opening contest at Spa-Francorchamps.

All drivers fitted wet-weather tyres for the start, with Kucharczyk leading away from pole and maintaining position after resisting JHR Developments’ John Bennett into Les Combes.

After pulling out a 1.3-second gap by the end of lap one, the Polish driver extended his advantage to 1.7s on the next lap before Bennett closed in by 0.3s.

But Kucharczyk responded on lap four to grow his lead to 2.2s and he controlled proceedings from there to take the chequered flag 1.811s clear, with eight of the nine scheduled laps being completed due the race’s maximum time limit expiring.

Louis Sharp grew his championship lead to 12 points by finishing third after prevailing in an early battle with his Rodin Motorsport team-mate Ugo Ugochukwu, who ran off the track at Les Combes after trying a move around the outside of the New Zealander.

Ugochukwu eventually came home in a comfortable fourth, 10s clear of Hitech’s Will Macintyre, who climbed from eighth to fifth. Macintyre made up one spot early on before passing McKenzy Cresswell and Velocity Racing Development by Arden’s Noah Ping.

Ping finished sixth ahead of Elite Motorsport duo Cresswell and Hugo Schwarze, the latter moving up from 12th to eighth.

Rodin’s Arthur Rogeon was ninth on the road, but a time penalty for exceeding track limits demoted the French racer to 15th. That promoted VRD’s Nikita Johnson to ninth, the debutant having struggled in the early stages and slipped back five places from fifth on the grid.

Elite’s Jarrod Waberski was 10th ahead of JHR’s Josh Irfan and Kanato Le, who took 12th in this first ever GB3 race for Chris Dittmann Racing. Fellow debutant Marcus Luzio prevailed in a battle with his Hillspeed team-mate Aditya Kulkarni and eventually finished 19th ahead of VRD’s Shawn Rashid, who tumbled down the order early on.

Hitech’s Gerrard Xie was the only retirement after pulling into the pitlane shortly after the start.

Race results (8 laps)