Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography
GB3 race-winner Joseph Loake has earned a prize Formula 1 test by winning the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award.
The full prize list for the 18-year-old is a £200,000 cheque, a test in one of Aston Martin’s F1 cars, full British Racing Drivers’ Club membership, an Arai helmet and helmet bag.
While many British drivers make their first car racing steps in the entry-level sportscar series Ginetta Junior, Loake did the BRSCC Fiesta Junior championship which is a touring car rival to Ginetta’s series.
He debuted in Fiesta Junior during the poorly contested 2019 season, missing the opening round but winning five of the 14 races he contested and coming second in the points. He returned in 2020 and won all of the eight races held to take the title,
For 2021 he moved into British Formula 4 with JHR Developments, and it took just three races to become a winner. Claiming two other victories in his rookie season put him sixth in the standings, and last year he was a non-scorer from two rounds in F4 United Arab Emirates and only took two second places in the first half of the British F4 season. But in the season’s second half he won four races to secure fifth in the championship.
Loake remained with JHR for the step up to GB3 in 2023, and exceeded his own expectations. He claimed two poles on his debut and converted them into a first and third place, took two further wins in round two and a fourth win in the second half of the season to come third in the standings.
“I’m speechless, I honestly cannot believe it. This is the best thing I’ve received in my life. Thank you to everyone for helping me and sticking by me. I cannot believe it,” said Loake after receiving the award from the Aston Martin F1 team’s sporting director Andy Stevenson.
“I cannot put it into words, the whole way through the event, the fitness test, the simulator test and the full track test, it was so rugged. I am so thankful for this.
“It has been an incredible season for me, I wasn’t expecting it, and hopefully next year I can make a step towards Formula 3. My family have been there from start to finish, they are the ones who took this chubby kid from karting to win this.”
The drivers he went up against in AMABA’s on-track tests over two days at Silverstone were GB3 champion Callum Voisin, F3 racer Taylor Barnard and Formula 4 race-winner Arvid Lindblad.
Each of them got to drive a MotorSport Vision Formula 2 car, a United Autosports-run Ligier LMP3 prototype sportscar and one of Beechdean Motorsport’s Aston Martin Vantage GT3s.
The judging panel that chose Loake as the winner consisted of BRDC vice-president Derek Warwick (as chairman), IMSA champion Alexander Sims, long-time Aston Martin sportscar driver Darren Turner, IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti, racer Andrew Kirkaldy, ex-F1 driver Johnny Herbert, race car designer Mark Williams, engineer Leena Gade, commentator Ian Titchmarsh and Autosport magazine’s chief editor Kevin Turner.