Freddie Slater and Hillspeed win first race of GB3’s new era

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Hillspeed’s Freddie Slater took a lights-to-flag victory in the season-opening GB3 race at Silverstone as the series’ new car made its debut.

Slater converted pole into the lead at the start and then resisted pressure into turn two from JHR Developments’ Noah Lisle, who had swept around the outside of Rodin Motorsport’s Gianmarco Pradel at Copse into second.

Pradel was challenged into Maggots by his team-mate Abbi Pulling, who then ran wide at Becketts and lost fourth to fellow Rodin driver Alex Ninovic. The front five pulled clear on the opening lap, while JHR’s Kai Daryanani fought hard to keep hold of sixth.

Slater held a 1.8-second lead at the end of lap one, and gradually extended his advantage over the remainder of the 12-lap contest to take his maiden GB3 triumph by 6.982s

Lisle and Pradel both scored podiums on debut with second and third respectively, while Ninovic ran close behind the pair all race and finished fourth. Pulling slightly faded initially but came home a second further adrift in fifth, having halved the deficit to her team-mates late on.

Daryanani resisted race-long pressure from Hitech GPs Nikita Johnson, but a five-second penalty at the chequered flag demoted him three places to ninth.

Johnson therefore inherited sixth ahead of his team-mate Keanu Al Azhari and Elite Motorsport’s Will Macintyre. Xcel Motorsport’s DIon Gowda started and finished 10th, with his team-mate Patrick Heuzenroeder one place behind him. Having qualified in the top-10, Hiyu Yamakoshi and Kenato Le lost ground during a frenetic opening lap and finished 12th and 13th respectively.

Deagen Fairclough’s difficult weekend continued. Having lined up from 16th, the Hitech driver stalled on the grid and was forced to start the race from the pitlane, and he made up ground to 17th by the finish.

Elite Motorsport’s Bianca Bustamante was a non-starter after damaging her car in a qualifying shunt.

Race result (12 laps)