Photo: Mat Acton
Rodin Motorsport’s Louis Sharp scored a double pole in qualifying as the new GB3 season got underway at Oulton Park.
Flynn Jackes posted an opening benchmark of 1m35.403s in the 20-minute session to lead his Chris Dittmann Racing team-mates Seb Murray and Rishab Jain, then lowered the pace to a 1m31.076s on his next lap.
Sharp soon moved to the top, but his 1m29.980s laptime was deleted for exceeding track limits. He made his next lap count to demote JHR Developments’ John Bennett from first place by 0.075 seconds with a 1m29.684s.
Hitech GP’s Will Macintyre reduced Sharp’s advantage to 0.058s to move into second, with McKenzy Cresswell climbing to third for Elite Motorsport.
Sharp’s effort remained unbeaten until the final five minutes, when he improved to 1m29.554s and followed that up with a 1m29.292s to seal race one pole. The first of those laps was good enough to take pole for race two where the grid is decided by drivers’ second-best laptimes.
Bennett reclaimed second ahead of Hitech’s Gerrard Xie and despite improving further was still 0.287s shy of pole, but will start from the front two in the first two races of the weekend. Rodin’s Ugo Ugochukwu produced a late effort to snatch third from Xie for race one, the pair also sharing the second row for the sequel.
Cresswell qualified fifth ahead of Hitech’s Tymek Kucharczyk, the pair half a second off the pace. Macintyre slipped back to seventh ahead of Rodin’s Arthur Rogeon and Elite’s Jarrod Waberski, while Fortec Motorsports’ Colin rounded out the top 10.
JHR’s Patrick Heuzenroeder provisionally holds reversed-grid pole for race three having qualified one place behind Murray in 12th. Pre-event testing pacesetter James Hedley had two laps deleted during the session for exceeding track limits, and as the slowest qualifier will start from 21st in all three contests for VRD by Arden.
Qualifying round-up
Race 1 grid
1 Louis Sharp Rodin Motorsport 1m29.292s
2 John Bennett JHR Developments +0.287s
3 Ugo Ugochukwu Rodin Motorsport +0.389s
4 Gerrard Xie Hitech GP +0.513s
5 McKenzy Cresswell Elite Motorsport +0.521s
6 Tymek Kucharczyk Hitech GP +0.569s
7 Will Macintyre Hitech GP +0.689s
8 Arthur Rogeon Rodin Motorsport +0.732s
9 Jarrod Wabereski Elite Motorsport +0.751s
10 Colin Queen + Fortec Motorsports +0.763s
Race 2 grid
1 Sharp 1m29.554s
2 Bennett +0.147s
3 Xie +0.288s
4 Ugochukwu + 0.376s
5 Cresswell +0.391s
6 Kucharczyk +0.492s
7 Waberski +0.515s
8 Macintyre +0.530s
9 Seb Murray Chris Dittmann Racing +0.656s
10 Partick Heuzenroeder JHR Developments +0.826s
Race 3 grid
1 Heuzenroeder
2 Murray
3 Queen
4 Waberski
5 Rogeon
6 Macintyre
7 Kucharczyk
8 Cresswell
9 Xie
10 Ugochukwu