Points for Beauly teenager Ollie Stewart in the GB3 Championship despite string of bad luck for racer at Brands Hatch
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Beauly racer Ollie Stewart travelled back down south last weekend for rounds 16, 17 and 18 of the GB3 Championship, which took place at Brands Hatch on the venue’s long and undulating GP layout.
After one free practice session on Saturday morning, Stewart and the team at Elite Motorsport headed out for qualifying, where strong pace was hindered by hold-ups, meaning the teenager qualified just outside of the top-10 in 11th.
Whilst on his way to the grid for the formation lap of race one, Stewart encountered a problem with the steering wheel, and was forced to pit to allow the team to work on the issue.
Thankfully it was a quick fix, and the teenager was able to start the race, albeit from the pit lane. Recovering well, the Scottish driver made up four places to cross the line 19th.
After a slower start to race two, Stewart was down in 13th before the safety car was deployed on the second lap. Once racing resumed, Stewart was jumped by two cars at the restart, and with overtaking a difficult task remained in 15th until the chequered flag.
There was drama up ahead at the start of race three, with a collusion involving multiple cars bringing out the safety car once again.
Stewart did well to safely navigate his way through the drama and up into 10th spot. Max Esterson then ran wide in the closing laps, allowing the 16-year-old to sail through into ninth place and finish on a positive note to end the weekend.
There is now a five-week break before flying out to the Netherlands for the next three rounds of the GB3 Championship at Zandvoort over the weekend of October 14/15.
“Qualifying was set up to be really good," Stewart said.
"I was on a strong lap where I was three-tenths up after sector two but someone had a spin in front of me so I just had to box and get a new set of tyres on. We reset and I was on another flying lap and a red flag came out, so it was just really bad luck.
"There was a lot more potential in the car, which was good for us in the races as a lot of the cars around me didn't have the same pace I did.
“On the way to the grid for race one, I turned to get onto the starting straight and the steering wheel had become disconnected. I tried to fix it myself, but I was stuck in first gear. I had to box to fix the problem and thankfully we got going again, but it meant we were right at the back.
"It's difficult to overtake around here, we managed to make up a few places into 19th which was a good recovery, but we could have done a lot more.
“I didn't get the greatest start to race two as I had a lot of wheelspin and dropped two places off the line but got one back quite quickly. The rest of the race was a bit of a procession as we all kind of stayed in the same positions. It's a shame about the bad start but it's always good to experience these things and learn from them.
“Race three was a big improvement on how the other two had gone. The start wasn't particularly good, but it wasn't bad either. There was a massive crash in front of me, so it was a case of weaving around and trying to get through safely.
"When the safety car went back in, I had a decent restart and managed to keep the cars behind me at bay. Overall, it was an enjoyable race and I’m happy with ninth.
“It was a bit of a poor weekend because of all our bad luck, but it was good that we could finish with a better result. I'm looking forward to Zandvoort as I've been there before for testing in a mixture of wet and dry conditions so hopefully, we will be strong there.”
