Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Rodin Motorsport’s Abbi Pulling led lights to flag from pole to claim her maiden GB3 victory at Spa-Francorchamps.
Pulling controlled a mid-race safety car restart before leading home Velocity Racing Development’s Nikita Bedrin and her team-mate Maxim Rehm in the weekend’s opening encounter, which was delayed for five hours due to heavy rain.
Qualifying took place on Friday, with Pulling clinching her first-ever pole in a red-flagged Q1, while championship leader Bedrin topped Q2 to take race two pole.
The field initially headed out behind the safety car on a waterlogged circuit for race one on Saturday morning, but officials soon decided conditions were too extreme and brought out the red flags.
The contest was rescheduled until later in the day, taking over the time slot initially scheduled for race two.
It was dry and sunny by the time proceedings got underway, and Pulling made a good start to lead into La Source, where a three-wide battle raged for second.
Having lined up from the outside of the front row, Rehm was challenged on the outside by Bedrin, and Hitech GP’s Deagen Fairclough made a late bid on the inside.
Bedrin prevailed to take second ahead of Rehm, but Fairclough slowed and headed for the pit lane at the end of lap one and retired. Rehm swept around the outside of Bedrin at Les Combes but ran wide, bounced over a sausage kerb and rejoined in third.
Pulling led by 1.2s at the end of lap one, and Bedrin had halved the deficit when the safety car was deployed due to Hillspeed’s Peter Bouzinelos retiring in the gravel at Les Combes.
There was 10 minutes of allotted time remaining when racing resumed, and Pulling edged clear once more, while Rehm used her team-mate’s slipstream on the Kemmel Straight to snatch second.
Bedrin reclaimed the position into Les Combes on the next tour, and closed to within 0.7s heading onto the final lap. He edged closer before the finish, but Pulling held on by 0.6s to become GB3’s first female winner.
Rehm came home 2s further adrift to complete the podium, while Molnar passed Hitech’s Jin Nakamura on lap two before making it three Rodin cars in the top four at the chequered flag.
Nakamura held off Xcel Motorsport’s Lucas Fluxa for fifth, the latter having come out on top during an early four-way scrap with Elite’s Flynn Jackes, Hillspeed’s Dante Vinci and VRD’s Patricio Gonzalez.
Kirill Kutsov finished ahead of his team-mate Jackes Vinci to take seventh while fellow Arden’s Lewis Gilbert completed the top 10.
Gonzalez, meanwhile, retired with right-front suspension damage following contact with Xcel’s Rowan Campbell-Pilling who was also forced out.
Race two will now take place on Sunday, with Bedrin due to start from his third pole of the season ahead of Rehm and Pulling, but the reversed-grid race has been cancelled.