Having never raced at the former British airfield before, Ralph Boschung, the youngest driver in the GP3 Series field, quickly got up to speed at Silverstone and was closing in on the top ten as early as qualifying; before claiming eleventh-place in qualifying and being the highest classified of the three Jenzer Motorsport drivers on the feature race grid and a third place podium finish in the sprint race.
A difficult getaway meant Boschung was immediately under pressure from Nissan LMP1 driver and GP3 winner Jann Mardenborough; luckily for the Swiss driver, the contact between the two drivers did not prevent the seventeen-year-old from making a strong recovery through the field.
“The contact with Mardenborough meant my car was a bit unstable throughout the Feature Race but I managed to recover thanks to our strong pace,” said Boschung. “We knew we could match the speed of the cars starting in front of us, as we had proved in qualifying when we weren’t far from cracking the top-10.”
Benefitted by Alex Palou‘s early retirement, Boschung had more of a fight on his hands though whilst trying to overtake Austrian sprint race winner Oscar Tunjo and Lotus F1 Team development driver Adderly Fong en route to P8.
This P8 finish meant that it was a pole position start for Boschung, but unlike his previous occasion starting on pole the Jenzer driver suffered too much wheelspin at lights out meaning that experienced racers Kevin Ceccon and Esteban Ocon beat him into the first corner.
“Lining up on the grid on Sunday morning, I was determined to convert pole position into a strong result and I’m glad we did. However, too much wheelspin at the start allowed Ceccon and Ocon through. This is one of the areas where I still need to improve because I had a similar issue on Saturday…”
The Swiss driver’s determination was not dented as he put up a defence against repeated assaults from Jimmy Eriksson and Matt Parry. His superb management of the Pirelli hard tyres meant Boschung was able to stay one second ahead of the Koiranen GP duo to the chequered flag.
“What a great feeling!” enthused Boschung. “I’m really happy to have secured my first ever podium in GP3, especially on a circuit like Silverstone where I had never raced before last weekend. When I crossed the line I was obviously tremendously happy, but also relieved after fighting to stay ahead of Eriksson and Parry right to the very end.”
This maiden podium allied with Boschung’s strong eighth-place finish has propelled him to 10th in the championship standings.
