Campbell-Pilling ends GB3 season at Barcelona with reversed-grid win

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Rowan Campbell-Pilling ended the GB3 season with victory in the reversed-grid race at Barcelona yesterday.

The Xcel Motorsport driver led lights-to-flag, and was mostly unchallenged through the 15-lap encounter.

Hillspeed’s Dante Vinci joined him on the front row, but bogged down and lost five spots on lap one. In contrast, his team-mate Aurelia Nobels made a strong launch from third and ran alongside Campbell-Pilling before opting to tuck in behind before the first corner.

Flynn Jackes (Elite Motorsport) ran third, and later in the lap newly crowned champion Nikita Bedrin (Velocity Racing Development) sliced his way up to fourth having started seventh.

Nobels lost second on lap two, as Jackes cleanly went down her inside at turn one, then closed in on Campbell-Pilling. However once he was in his dirty air, around 0.7 seconds behind, he could do no more.

The next bit of action in the top four came on lap 10, as Bedrin pressured Nobels. He got very close at turn seven, looked to her inside at turn 10 and then the outside through turn 12. Nobels defended slightly down the pit straight, and did the same on lap 12 but chose to do so too early and once she returned to the racing line there was room for Bedrin before they even reached turn one.

Yellow flags at the corner meant he would not have been allowed to pass there anywhere, but he had the chance to make more progress as the safety car appeared and his three-second deficit to Jackes was eradicated. Hitech GP’s Yuhao Fu had stopped at the side of the track, and Xcel’s Lucas Fluxa — who had been contending to become championship runner-up — stopped too before getting his car restarted.

Fluxa had been sixth, far behind Peter Bouzinelos who was chasing his team-mate Nobels, and clear of Vinci behind. His troubles dropped him to the back of the pack for the last-lap restart, with Kyuho Lee (Elite), Deagen Fairclough (Hitech), Ary Bansal (TJ Speed) and Martin Molnar (Rodin Motorsport) filling out the top 10. Fairclough and Molnar needed to make up more ground, having started 18th and ninth respectively, to demote Fluxa from second in the points table.

Lee had Fairclough and Bansal go either side of him all the way through to turn one at the restart, and it was he who had to go off at turn two and lose ground. There was more battling at turn five, and Bouzinelos made a failed dive on Nobels at tuen 10. Side-by-side action continued to turn 12, and Fairclough met the chequered flag in sixth ahead of Lee, Bansal and Abbi Pulling (Rodin).

In the last-lap action, Vinci and Molnar fell to 15th and 18th and then both got track limits penalties demoting them further. Stewards handed a two-place penalty to Lee, and Fluxa recovered to 19th before the stewards shuffled him back to 20th. It was a minor difference, as Fairclough’s finishing position meant he became championship runner-up regardless.

Race results (15 laps)