Summer Over, British F3 and British GT Head for Silverstone

09 August 2005

After a month-long break for the British F3 teams and drivers - and over six weeks since the last British GT Championship race - the 2005 season will get underway again at Silverstone, in the context of the third round of the Le Mans Endurance Series.

With a provisional entry list of thirty cars, the British F3 International Series is looking in fine shape! The previous meeting, at the historic Italian circuit of Monza, saw three breath-taking races around the ultra-fast circuit. In the Championship class, three wins for Carlin’s Alvaro Parente have further strengthened his lead in the classification, while his team-mate Charlie Kimball made the most of three second-place finishes to move up to second overall. Two podium finishes for Danilo Dirani (P1 Motorsport) showed that the Lola chassis is back on form. The National class drivers showed just how competitve the category currently is, with three different winners - Mawer (T-Sport), Clucas (Fluid Motorsport) and Duran (P1 Motorsport) closing up the leader-board.

Once again, there will be three races on the schedule for Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit. The rescheduled Spa round will only be open to those cars which qualifyied back in April. Sunday will see rounds 15 and 16.

In the British GT Championship, Scuderia Ecosse’s Kinch and Kirkaldy have been dominating the season, with seven wins out of eight GT2 races to date, and a full sweep of pole positions. The team will be busy at Silverstone, as they are also competing in the Le Mans Endurance Series, where the 1000 km race will take place on Saturday afternoon, starting at 16:00. Most of the teams are extremely familiar with Silverstone; Embassy Racing took their first podium finish of the season there in May, racing on the International layout in the FIA GT Championship - an event which also saw the highest-ever concentration of Mosler MT900 cars in one race, most of which should also be competing in Sunday’s two-hour British GT Championship race.

The GT3 class has been extremely varied this season, and although the Tech 9 team of Piers Masarati and Demetris Deverikos are currently leading with their Porsche 996 GT3 Cup , there have been wins for Team Aero (Morgan Aero 8), Team Tiger (Marcos Mantis) and United Christian Broadcasters (Ferrari 360).

This will be the second two-hour race of the season, after the first round in Donington back in April. With four races remaining after Silverstone - two at Mondello Park and two back at Silverstone, but on the International layout, in October, the Championship is closing up.

SRO

See 2005 series calendar for British F3 International Series

See 2005 series calendar for British GT Championship

Related Story 27.06.2005 - Kimball Takes British F3 Championship Pole at Monza

Related Story 27.06.2005 - Second British GT One-Two for Scuderia Ecosse at Castle Combe