Kjaergaard clings on in Formula 3 title race
Nicolai Kjaergaard kept his slim chances of winning the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship alive by taking his third victory of the season and cutting the points gap to current leader Linus Lundqvist.
Carlin was the team to beat on the
Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit, locking out four of the first five spots in qualifying, with reigning British Formula 4 champion Jamie Caroline taking pole ahead of Kjaergaard and Billy Monger.
With passing almost impossible around the GP layout aboard the F3 car due to the dirty air produced by the car in front, the starts to all three races proved crucial.
Lundqvist made “probably the best start of my season” to surge through from fourth to second by Paddock Hill Bend in the opener, the Double R Racing driver diving to the inside of Kjaergaard in a breathtaking move. But Caroline, again subbing for Clement Novalak who was out with a hand injury, led throughout to take his second win in two meetings, from Lundqvist and Kjaergaard.
“It’s never easy to win but it’s easier knowing that the car was there and it was down to me to get the job done,” said Caroline, who also took reversed-grid victory at Spa last month. “We got heat in the tyres to get a gap at the start and
I was just managing it.”
Jamie Chadwick took her first victory in the fully reversed-grid second race. The Douglas Motorsport driver started fourth and made her up way up to second by the end of the opening lap, behind Double R’s Pavan Ravishankar. But the Singaporean had picked up a 10-second penalty for a jumped start, and after finishing first on the road he was demoted to 10th, promoting Chadwick to the top step of the podium. “I knew that he [Ravishankar] was going to get a penalty but I was hoping it would be a drivethrough so I could get my head down – I wanted to win on the road,” she said.
Double R racer Krish Mahadik, who took his first and currently only win in the series during the same race 12 months ago, finished second, with Lanan Racing’s Kush Maini third as the title contenders struggled to make progress – Kjaergaard was ninth and Lundqvist 11th.
Kjaergaard took a lights-to-flag victory in the third and final race having started from pole, while Caroline jumped Lundqvist at the start from third to finish runner-up.
Despite this being the first weekend where Lundqvist didn’t claim a single win, his lead was only cut by nine points to 111 with two rounds remaining. “Unfortunately that’s the case [the first meeting without a win] but it’s been a solid weekend,” said the Swede. “We got two podiums which is not a bad result. Maybe we didn’t maximise speed.”
The Caterham Seven 420Rs produced the best racing action of the weekend, as seven cars were in contention until the closing laps of the opener. Danny Winstanley used his experience to avoid
the mayhem around him and outdragged Will Smith to the line by just 0.036s.
In the second race, both Winstanley and Smith managed to break the tow of the chasing pack, with Smith edging out to a narrow win from Winstanley, who extended his lead at the top of the standings.
Harry King made the drop down from the Ginetta GT4 Supercup to compete in the G40 Cup, replacing Jamie Hopkins at Elite Motorsport for this round, and took a hat-trick of wins. In the opening two races he was outdragged to Paddock by champion-elect Tom Golding, but retook the lead before the end of the lap each time. Race three, with the top eight reversed, proved more troublesome, but he overcame the seven cars ahead of him to lead by lap five. Golding did enough with three runner-up spots to claim the title.
Mark Ashworth took one of his most enjoyable victories aboard his
TVR Grantura Mk3 in the Equipe GTS race, taking the lead on the final lap from Jack Rawles (Austin Healey Mk2), who struggled with overheating.
James Crawshaw took his sixth and seventh wins of the season in the Ginetta Racing Drivers Club to cap off the season as the series’ most successful driver.