Junior single-seater action was sparse this weekend, with the GB4 Championship’s season opener at Donington Park the only event to have taken place. Feeder Series reviews what happened.

By Feeder Series

GB4’s first round with its new Tatuus MSV GB4-025 car featured a historic podium lockout and ended with having a championship leader who had yet to win a race. While that was the only junior single-seater racing action of note, it was a notable weekend in several related disciplines.

Alisha Palmowski, the 2024 GB4 runner-up, topped F1 Academy’s three-day pre-event test at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit with a 2:05.040 set on the second day. On that day, Prema’s Nina Gademan crashed at Turn 5 and was taken to hospital. On Sunday afternoon, the Dutchwoman wrote on Instagram that she was not seriously injured but was “still experienc[ing] a lot of pain” from the incident. She missed the final day of the test. 

Gademan’s incident came on the same day that 2023 F1 Academy champion Marta García was spun into the barriers at high speed in a Le Mans Cup race at Barcelona. She has spent the past two nights in hospital under observation but was “cleared of any major injuries”.

The next day, Jamie Chadwick, a race winner in Indy NXT last year, became the first woman to take victory in the European Le Mans Series’ LMP2 category. The former Williams junior did so on her series debut as part of IDEC Sport’s line-up, which also featured Daniel Juncadella and Mathys Jaubert. Eurocup-3 alumnus and reigning Asian Le Mans Series champion Theodor Jensen, meanwhile, took victory in the LMP3 class for CLX Motorsport along with Adrien Closmenil and Paul Lanchère.

On the other side of Spain in Campillos, F1 juniors from four different academies starred in the opening round of the FIA Karting European Championship. In the OK class, Mercedes’ James Anagnostiadis led McLaren’s Dries van Langendonck across the line, while in OK-Junior, new Ferrari recruit Noah Baglin defeated Williams junior Dean Hoogendoorn.

GB4: Guinchard takes narrow lead as Elite Motorsport make history

Hillspeed’s Daniel Guinchard picked up three top-five finishes to leave the opening round of the GB4 season with a two-point advantage in the drivers’ standings over Isaac Phelps, whose Elite Motorsport team made history by becoming the first team to lock out a podium since GB4 began in 2022.

Despite not taking a victory and finishing on the podium just once, Guinchard left Donington Park as the only driver to be ahead of the Elite Motorsport trio in the standings. Phelps and teammates Alexandros Kattoulas and Ary Bansal are second, third and fourth in the championship respectively, with just 15 points separating the top four.

“[Guinchard] hasn’t been as quick as us in any of the three races and he’s come away leading the championship, so it’s something for us to learn from,” Elite team principal Eddie Ives told Feeder Series.

Ives’ team were the pacesetters from the start of the weekend, with Kattoulas and Bansal each topping a day of testing and Phelps claiming double pole in Saturday’s qualifying session. Phelps then took a lights-to-flag victory in race one from Guinchard.

Bansal had lined up third on the grid, but contact with Jack Taylor on the exit of Turn 1 forced him to come into the pits at the end of lap one to repair his front wing. The Bangalore native was still able to demonstrate his pace, setting the two fastest laps of the race on his way to 21st.

The pieces all came together for Elite Motorsport in race two, in which Bansal claimed victory from third on the grid. A fantastic launch helped Bansal immediately get ahead of Taylor before he overtook Phelps around the outside of Turn 1 and sprinted away to take victory by 4.023 seconds.

Phelps held off teammate Kattoulas, and the pair came home second and third respectively, completing a single-team podium lockout for the first time in GB4 history. Kattoulas also took consecutive third-place finishes.

In race three, Phelps was the driver who would experience a poor result. The Briton was knocked wide at the Melbourne hairpin by Graham Brunton Racing’s Callum Baxter on the first lap and pitted the next lap to repair a damaged front wing. He recovered to 19th at the flag, helped by a race-ending collision between Jason Pribyl and Luca Magnussen on the exit of the final corner on the final lap.

After KMR Sport’s Alex O’Grady was disqualified from qualifying for having too much camber on the car, Alex Berg inherited 12th position on the grid for race three and with it reverse-grid pole position. The Canadian took a lights-to-flag victory, 1.002s ahead of Enzo Hallman of Douglas Motorsport and just over five seconds ahead of Pace Performance’s Stefan Bostandjiev.

It was also the Canadian’s first victory in 10 months, with his last trip to the top step of the podium coming in the second race at Thruxton in the fourth round of the 2024 British F4 season.

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Isaac Phelps, 1:27.724	Jack Taylor, +0.122s	Ary Bansal, +0.178s
Race 1 (13 laps)	Isaac Phelps, 19:16.352	Daniel Guinchard, +1.360s	Alexandros Kattoulas, +3.996s
Race 2 (13 laps)	Ary Bansal, 19:17.659	Isaac Phelps, +4.023s	Alexandros Kattoulas, +4.830s
Race 3 (13 laps)	Alex Berg, 19:24.439	Enzo Hallman, +1.002s	Stefan Bostandjiev, +5.078s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Daniel Guinchard, 66	Elite Motorsport, 149
P2	Isaac Phelps, 64	Hillspeed, 110
P3	Alex Kattoulas, 58	Douglas Motorsport, 86
P4	Ary Bansal, 51	Graham Brunton Racing, 76
P5	Alex Berg, 46	Fortec Motorsport, 52
P6	Enzo Hallman, 46	Pace Performance, 49
P7	Leandro Juncos, 44	Arden Motorsport, 43
P8	Stefan Bostandjiev, 34	KMR Sport, 37
P9	Alex O’Grady, 30	ADM, 15
P10	Luke Hilton, 28	Fox Motorsport, 13

Report by George Sanderson

Header photo credit: Dom Bessell