Three leading lights from this year’s GB4 Championship, plus 2025 champion Ary Bansal, made their GB3 debuts at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last weekend.
This year’s runner-up Fred Green stayed with Elite Motorsport as he made the jump up to European competition, and he showed his undoubted potential by qualifying a stunning second for race two, and only three hundredths of a second away from pole position.
His best race result was fourth in race two, only six tenths of a second from a podium spot, while also taking 10th place in his debut race on Saturday afternoon.
“There are some really good positives to take away for sure,” Green said. “It’s been a really valuable weekend to learn as much as I can ahead of whatever I do next year.
“I was really encouraged with my one lap pace, so I was really happy with qualifying, that put a smile on my face for sure. I’d had a few test days to adapt and get used to it, there’s a lot more aero compared to GB4 and just a bigger car in general, so it was tough adapting to it initially, but the one lap pace game really quickly. It’s the racing side of things I need to adapt to now.”
Ingram Hill meanwhile joined the returning JHR Developments team for the series finale and made a superb impression. The British driver qualified fourth for race one and fifth for race two, just ahead of newly crowned champion Nikita Bedrin. He earned best results of seventh and eighth in his first two races.
“It was great to qualify in the top-five twice, if you’d told me at the start of the weekend that I’d have qualified like that I’d have been pretty happy," he said. "To be starting on the second row for my debut was pretty good when most of the others have done a whole year.
“In the races we struggled a bit with tyre deg, and that’s just a lack of experience. But to be seventh and eighth in the first two races was pretty good.”
Achituv became GB3’s first Israeli driver, as he teamed up with Arden Motorsport for his first taste of racing in the series. He also showed well as he improved his pace across the weekend, moving forward in the races with good maturity.
“It was very interesting, a big learning experience as I came into the weekend with basically zero testing," he reflected. "So I just jumped into the car on Thursday and it went alright, I was hoping for a bit better but I couldn’t really ask for much more.
“I qualified about a second off and made some progress in the races, just learning this car. The most encouraging thing was that while I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, I wasn’t miles off. I was P17, but my lap times were only about two tenths away from the top-10, so there’s certainly some encouraging signs for next year.”
Bansal made his own GB3 debut with new team TJ Speed Motorsports. He qualified 21st for race one, but only just over a second away from pole, and moved up to 13th in the second qualifying, this time only half a second from top spot. He moved up to 15th at the end of race one, stayed 13th in race two, and saved his best until last by finishing seventh in the finale.
The quartet were among eight drivers on the grid with GB4 experience, with Leon Wilson and Jason Pribyl ending their first campaigns in the series. Arjen Kraling and Lewis Wherrell, who both made one-off GB4 entries in 2025 also made their GB3 debuts in Spain.
