Toby Sowery continued his dominant weekend with a lights-to-flag victory in race one of the BRDC British F3 Championship at Silverstone. The Lanan Racing driver broke away winning by a comfortable margin over his rivals in the Carlin‘s.
The first lap brought up the usual drama, with both Guilherme Samaia and Jordan Cane both forced to pull into the pits due to damage for their front wings. For Cane, a failed lunge on Ben Hingeley saw only slight damage, but it was enough to put him out of contention.
This left an opportunity for Manuel Maldonado to make progress, running in sixth as he held off not just his teammate, Nicolai Kjaergaard but also the poor starting Cameron Das with Maldonado putting in a spectacular defensive display.
Back at the front, Sowery continued to lead with the Carlin drivers of Enaam Ahmed and James Pull attempting to chase him down. The Lanan driver knew the gap though, not letting Ahmed within a second, though the championship leader has pressure of his own from Pull.
The breakaway leaders and the battle for sixth meant that Callan O’Keeffe and Ben Hingeley were running lonely races, though would be pleased with the overall result.
Pull continued to hound Ahmed, with the #65 clearly not as comfortable as he’s proven to be in the rest of this season. The younger teammate had a point to prove, but Ahmed would hang on narrowly to second place.
Up front though, it was unchallenged from Toby Sowery, taking his maiden win of 2017, finally getting his championship bid underway. Ahmed and Pull rounded out the podium with O’Keeffe chasing them in fourth.
Hingeley was untouched in fifth, with Das eventually breaking away from the Kjaergaard and Maldonado battle. Rounding out the top ten would be Jamie Chadwick and Omar Ismail.
Sowery said after the race; “We got a gap after the first four laps, then just managed to maintain just chipping away. Obviously there’s a fine line between pushing enough and pushing too much, so it was all about managing the gap.”
Talking about race two, he said; “There’s a lot of track to explore, it’s more than capable to go five wide, so it should be easy to overtake one… hopefully.” he laughed.
