GB3

Harvey Closes The Gap To Jaafar With Victory Number Two

3 Mins read

Having already secured victory in Round 12 on Saturday, Jack Harvey drove a masterful race in Round 14 of the F3 International Series, leading from pole position to the finish line ahead both his Carlin team mates, Jazeman Jaafar and Harry Tincknell, with it being a 1-2-3 finish, in a race that had drama after the dash to the first corner.

Round 13's winner, Pipo Derani clashed wheels with Carlos Sainz coming into Paddock Hill bend, with both drivers finishing their race stuck in the gravel trap, almost collecting Felix Serralles, who managed to keep his Fortec Dallara-Mercedes rolling through the gravel to rejoin the race. But the safety car was deployed for the next two laps, and after racing resumed, there were no real moves happening inside the top ten.

Tincknell was pleased to see the chequered flag, with his Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen developing a sticky throttle, with the Devonian happy to keep third place from a fast chasing Alex Lynn from Fortec, who settled for fourth place by just half a second. Pietro Fantin secured another top five finish ahead of Australia's Nick McBride, who secured his best feature race result of the season for T-Sport in sixth place.

Hannes van Asseldonk finished ahead of Geoff Urhane, who was able to have a better finish after last time out, in 8th place, with Serralles ending up ahead of Fahmi Ilyas in tenth place, when the Malaysian racer made a mistake at Clearways, costing him time and putting him at the bottom of the top ten.

Adderley Fong completed a successful return to F3, having secured a hat trick of National class victories, which showed the returning CF Racing Team on top form, leading throughout the weekend.  T-Sport's Spike Goddard was putting the Chinese driver under pressure at the halfway point, until his error at Westfield eight laps from the finish, ended the Australian's race, which handed second place to Duvashen Padayachee from Double R Racing.

Fong, having last raced an F3 car in 2011, is intending to do further races later on this year, and was very modest talking about the results he and the CF Racing team have had this weekend: “It took a little time to get back used to the car but we've been improving it all weekend and everything has gone according to plan.”

But after the dominance that Jack Harvey showed this weekend, he has managed to convert two wins from two pole positions, and was really ecstatic with his performance this weekend: “I've had two poles before this season and not made the most of them, so it's good to do as well as we thought we could. The team has done a great job for me.

“I don't feel as if anything has 'clicked' as such – I have always felt that results like this were possible. It's just a combination of working hard to get the best from our car and driving well. This weekend we maybe had the edge over Jazeman a bit, and we need to maintain that.”

This now puts the 19-year-old Lincolnshire lad just seven points behind series leader Jaafar, who also was happy at his performance over the last race, saying the following about the result and his team mate: Jack and I both made good starts. That was my only real opportunity to get ahead and I lost that battle. Jack drove brilliantly and his race pace was really good, and that's something we need to look at and work on. But all in all it was not a bad race, I scored good points and I am quite pleased.”

So, after the events that unfolded at Brands Hatch, Harvey is closing on Jaafar in the International Class, with Carlos Sainz a further 30 points behind the Brit, with Spike Goddard leading by 20 points over Padayachee, with the next set of races being held during the weekend of the 5th round of the DTM Championship at the Norisring this coming weekend.

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