Whilst the 2025 GB4 Championship started with the biggest grid in the series’ history, the season opener at Donington Park also produced the closest qualifying session for contemporary single seaters on the Grand Prix circuit in 18 years!
At the end of the 15-minute session on Saturday, just 1.067 seconds covered Elite Motorsport’s pole sitter Isaac Phelps and Fortec Motorsport’s Luca Magnussen in 20th place.
Across the dozens of single seater series to have visited the iconic East Midlands venue across the last several decades, including British F3, GB3, British F4 and World Series by Renault amongst many others, the most recent qualifying session to be any closer occurred back in in 2007.
Then, in the Formula Renault Eurocup, with a grid featuring future F1 drivers Brendon Hartley, Charles Pic, Jaime Alguersuari and Roberto Merhi (plus now Alpine F1 Team Principal Oliver Oakes!), the top-20 was covered by 1.009 seconds. That session saw drivers complete as many as 24 laps, whereas the most achieved by a driver in GB4 qualifying on Saturday was 10.
As a further indication of the intense competition to look forward to in GB4 this year, the top-20 drivers on the grid for race two on Sunday morning, decided by each driver’s second quickest times in qualifying, were covered by a mere 1.2 seconds.
“Such incredible closeness is proof of the outstanding equality of performance of our new GB4 car with its two litre normally aspirated engine, as well as the quality of our GB4 drivers,” commented MSV Chief Executive Jonathan Palmer.
“The 2025 championship has got off to a brilliant start and with both teams and drivers delighted, grids will grow further especially given the unrivalled value of the series.”
