Douglas Motorsport driver Kiern Jewiss has taken pole position for both races one and three in the second visit to the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit as part of the 2019 BRDC British Formula 3 Championship for the series seventh round of the single-seater racing series. Jewiss’s fastest time of a 1 min 55.845 was just over a tenth of a second faster than long-time provisional pole-sitter Sasakorn Chaimongkol to beat Linus Lunqvist’s pole time from last year.
As the session began, the track was just continuing to dry out after rain greeted the Silverstone GP circuit first thing on Saturday morning. But soon, the grey skies had turned to blue and the times began to tumble.
First to set a representative laptime was Chaimongkol with a 2 min 00.348, but his early effort was soon annihilated by Lucas Petersson who was the first man to set a sub-two minutes time with a 1 min 58.456.
However, it wasn’t long before the rest of the grid caught up and Jewiss soon found even more time – going the best part of two seconds faster than the Swede to have his first time at the top in the timesheets. Chaimongkol was the next man to occupy provisonal pole position with his 1 min 56.456 a tenth faster than the Douglas Motorsport driver managed.
Belgium’s Ulysse De Pauw then headed the pack as his 1 min 56.270 was 0.022 s than championship contender Johnathan Hoggard by the mid-way point of thr qualifying session.
But soon Chaimongkol managed to get into the 1 min 55s courtsey of a 1 min 55.962 to head the field. Although after the next runs, he was just a thousandth clear of Chris Dittmann Racing’s Ayrton Simmons with Jewiss six-thousandths further behind.
So it all came down to the last lap. Chaimongkol was not able to manage a better time and abandoned his effort, but out of nowhere, Jewiss managed to steal pole position right from Chaimongkol’s nose, beating the Thai driver by just over a tenth of a second with Simmons in third position.
As for the title contenders: Hoggard will start just behind the top three in fourth, while Clement Novalak endured a miserable session and will hope to recover from ninth on the grid in the first race of the weekend with seventh for race three not acting as much consolation.
Full Table of results for the fastest qualifying times at the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit and the grid for race nineteen of the 2019 BRDC British Formula 3 Championship are as follows:-
POS | Driver name | NAT | laptime |
1 | Kiern Jewiss | GBR | 1.55.845 |
2 | Sasakorn Chaimongkol | THA | 1.55.962 |
3 | Ayrton Simmons | GBR | 1.55.963 |
4 | Johnathan Hoggard | GBR | 1.56.070 |
5 | Ulysse De Pauw | BEL | 1.56.270 |
6 | Neil Verhagen | USA | 1.56.350 |
7 | Kaylen Frederick | USA | 1.56.371 |
8 | Benjamin Pedersen | USA | 1.56.438 |
9 | Clement Novalak | GBR | 1.56.532 |
10 | Hampus Ericsson | SWE | 1.56.552 |
11 | Lucas Petersson | SWE | 1.56.893 |
12 | Josh Mason | GBR | 1.56.960 |
13 | Manuel Maldonado | VEN | 1.57.034 |
14 | Pavan Ravishankar | SIN | 1.57.084 |
15 | Nicolas Varrone | ARG | 1.57.205 |
16 | Nazim Azman | MAS | 1.57.592 |
17 | Kris Wright | USA | 1.58.306 |