Having entered the single-seater scene in 2022, Gerrard Xie moved to Europe in 2023 and has been with the Hitech team ever since. Feeder Series spoke to the Chinese driver ahead of the Bahrain round of his maiden Formula 3 campaign.

By Marco Albertini

In October, Hitech announced that 18-year-old Xie would step up to F3 with them for 2025, the first year of the new Dallara F3 2025 chassis.

Xie currently sits 24th in the standings after the opening round in Melbourne, where he scored a best result of 16th in the sprint race.

Born in Hong Kong but based in Shenzhen, Xie stepped up to single-seaters in 2022 after competing in karting in both Asia and Europe. That year, he competed in both Chinese F4 and the now-defunct Formula Renault Super Challenge.

He dominated both series – winning all but two races in the former and going four-for-four in the latter – and capped off the year with a second-place finish at the Macau Grand Prix. Behind the scenes, Xie had an ace up his sleeve for Chinese F4.

“I did a lot of testing before the season started because the season started all the way in August, so I wanted to be very prepared for both championships,” he said. “That’s why I think I made a big difference compared to the others.”

Moving up to GB3 for 2023, Xie joined Hillspeed and the Hitech GP Academy for his first full campaign in Europe since his final year of karting in 2021. 

“It was really hard,” he said about his return to Europe. “The first test was quite mind-blowing for me, but after that, I acknowledged the gap from China to Europe and from there on it was trying to bridge the gap.”

The Chinese driver had a difficult year, scoring two top-five finishes at Spa before ending the year with a win at the finale at Donington Park.

“The win in Donington was a great confidence boost, especially since I knew I was going to drive for Hitech in the following year,” Xie said. “The year itself was a good experience and went according to plan.”

What Xie knew privately was only made public in February 2024, in the middle of his FRegional Oceania campaign with M2 Competition. He won the reverse-grid race at Taupo and took a further podium at Ruapuna to finish seventh in the standings.

“[Racing in] New Zealand was really special,” Xie said. “When I first went there I didn’t expect much, but the country is nice and so was the quality of the field. There are the top European drivers and there are the top American drivers to compete against, which is really special.”

Staying in GB3 for the rest of the year with the Hitech main team, Xie scored his first pole at the Hungaroring round and won race one from teammate Tymek Kucharczyk. He also started on pole in race two but fell back to 19th after suffering a technical issue early on. Come season’s end, he finished seventh in the standings on 261 points.

Less than six months after the GB3 finale, Xie had already completed three days of testing with the new car at Barcelona as well as his first race weekend in F3 at Albert Park.

“This car has a very neutral balance,” Xie said. “Every driver likes it as the setup window is big, so every driver is making the setups as they like, but we still have to find the optimum setup.

“I personally found out the car is quite nice to set up because we usually expect this to be like F2, which is very heavy and hard to turn in. I think the most important thing is to prepare with the team before the weekend. Compared to GB3 we look a lot more into details, even pre-event. So with good preparation, I think we can be pretty good.”

GB3’s tyres are also considerably smaller than F3’s. Last year, the British series had eight-inch front and 10-inch rear tyres, while F3’s new tyres are all 16 inches in diameter. 

“The tyre degradation is quite different. In GB3 you race 10 laps, but in F3 you do double the distance, so you have to manage the tires while also pushing on the first few laps,” Xie said. “If you push too hard, then your tires are pretty much gone for the last half of the race. It’s a new thing for me to learn this year, but I think I’m adapting well. We’ve done three or four long runs and they did help a lot.”

Xie is also part of a much larger grid now, with 30 cars in F3. GB3 last year had between 20 and 23 entrants per round.

“The top 10 in GB3 and Formula Regional is pretty close, but in F3 everyone is so close. Especially on day three of testing in Bahrain, 28 drivers were covered in one second, so if you had even a small mistake you lose seven places, which is crazy.”

F3’s second round will take place at the Sakhir International Circuit. In the series’ pre-event test at the circuit last week, Xie set the 19th-fastest time overall across the three days of testing. Teammates Martinius Stenshorne and Joshua Dufek, both F3 sophomores, set the 15th- and the 24th-fastest times overall respectively.

“Bahrain is a pretty cool track,” Xie said. “There are a lot of heavy braking zones, and with the amount of data we collected I think we look strong ahead of the race. I’m also quite happy that I’m close to my teammate Martinius.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency