A new chapter for the GB4 Championship began at Donington Park earlier this month as the series’ largest-ever grid took on its new car. Feeder Series was in the paddock to see who rose to the challenge.

By George Sanderson

Ten months ago, when MotorSport Vision unveiled its plans for the future of GB3 and GB4, new cars for both series stole the headlines. GB3’s flamboyant F1-inspired machine took centre stage, but arguably the bigger story was whether the entry-level GB4 could retain its DNA as the low-cost answer to British F4 by switching to a considerably faster car.

By the time the series went to Donington Park for the first round of 2025, the answer to that question seemed to be an emphatic yes. A record 25 drivers drove the series’ Tatuus MSV GB4-025, based upon a simplified version of GB3’s previous chassis, in the weekend’s three races. Potential seats could be filled at any of Arden Motorsport, Fox Motorsport, Hillspeed or Pace Performance before the grid reaches its maximum of 28.

More than a nearly doubled grid size, there was even closer competition than with the Tatuus F4-T014 used before. Before Alex O’Grady’s disqualification from sixth, polesitter Isaac Phelps and Luca Magnussen, originally 20th, were separated by just 1.065 seconds in qualifying on Saturday.

That was the closest top 20 for contemporary single-seaters on the 4.02-kilometre Donington Park Grand Prix layout since the Formula Renault Eurocup round there in September 2007, when the top 20 on a 34-car grid were covered by 1.009 seconds. Four of those drivers – Brendon Hartley, Charles Pic, Jaime Alguersuari and Roberto Merhi – were on their way to racing in F1; half of GB4’s current grid had yet to be born.

Yet even with such a close grid, clear favourites had started to emerge. Phelps was one, and after qualifying first for both races, he bolted at the start of race one and pulled a 1.790-second gap over Hillspeed’s Daniel Guinchard by the end of the first lap. 

Following Phelps’ win in race one, Elite Motorsport also made history in the second race when they became the first GB4 team to achieve a podium lockout since the championship began. Ary Bansal took victory by 4.023 seconds over Phelps, with Alexandros Kattoulas a further 0.807 seconds behind.

“We’ve got three good kids and we’re very lucky to have three good drivers this year in our GB4 team, and that makes us as a team look good,” team principal Eddie Ives said about the achievement.

Elite Motorsport lead the teams’ championship by 39 points, but the team’s drivers lacked in one area: consistency. At the first corner of the first race, Bansal hit and punctured the right-rear tyre of Fortec Motorsport’s Jack Taylor, damaging the Indian’s front wing and dropping him to 21st place. The opening lap also proved to be troublesome for Phelps in race three, when Callum Baxter pushed him wide at the Melbourne hairpin, forcing him to pit for repairs. Phelps finished 19th with the fastest lap.

“In race three, someone [Baxter] decided to just miss the corner and hit me, so that ruined my race,” Phelps said. “That wasn’t great in terms of the championship points, but [I’m] still P2, only two points off, and confident that we’ve got better pace than the person in P1.”

That driver is Guinchard, who did not win a race but showed the consistency that Phelps and Bansal lacked. The Hillspeed driver finished second in the first race from fourth on the grid, while fifth- and fourth-place finishes in races two and three put him on 66 points after the opening three races. Just two points behind is Phelps, with Kattoulas on 58 points and Bansal on 51 points completing the top four.

“Guinchard’s left this weekend, in my opinion, not really being as quick as us,” Ives added. “His race pace has been good and he’s a very good kid, but he 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 we need to learn from, and [we’ll aim to] get as many points as we can over Silverstone.”

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“I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling for the whole weekend!”

Those were the words of Graham Brunton Racing’s Alex Berg following his race three victory. The Canadian inherited 12th in qualifying, and thus the reverse-grid pole position for race three, following O’Grady’s disqualification. Berg led from lights to flag, fending off the early challenge of Leon Wilson and taking his first victory in 10 months.

“It was really perfect,” he said. “It’s the most fun I’ve had in a race car in a really long time, and I think the first triple points finish I’ve had since 2023. I’m just happy, and my attitude is going to be positive from here on out because I can tell that it works.”

Berg finished 14th in the British F4 Championship last year after moving across the pond from North America. The season, however, was a struggle, with his only podium finish being his win at Thruxton in June.

“Last year was incredibly difficult for me,” he said. “I was really low on my self-confidence and [my] mental health was just in the gutter, but this year I went in with a new attitude. I had no testing until Thursday of race week, so it was a difficult start to the year… but I made up for it. [I] got better, better and better every single race, every single session and ended up with a win!”

Berg’s result was also GBR’s first victory in GB4 since Logan Hannah won the reverse-grid race at the same track in 2022. In a heartwarming scene to end the weekend, Berg climbed onto the gate by parc ferme to celebrate with his GBR team members, who then surrounded Berg on the podium after the ceremony to celebrate their victory.

Berg was joined on the podium by Douglas Motorsport’s Enzo Hallman and Pace Performance’s Stefan Bostandjiev, who confirmed to Feeder Series that the Donington round would be his only outing in GB4 this season. The Bulgarian, currently eighth in the standings, said he had used the round as preparation for his full-time campaign with Fortec Motorsport in GB3, his first in single-seaters.

The pair ended up on the rostrum after Hillspeed’s Leandro Juncos collided with Arden Motorsport’s Wilson at the Melbourne hairpin while fighting for second. Both cars spun, and whilst Wilson recovered quickly and still managed to claim eighth place, Juncos dropped to 14th and earned a three-place grid penalty for his next GB4 race.

The podium Hallman inherited, his first of the season, lifted him to sixth in the drivers’ standings between Berg and Juncos. The 2024 Formula Nordic runner-up told Feeder Series about the “big step” he had to make going into the season opener due to a lack of testing time.

“We were one and a half seconds behind everybody in the practice,” he said “[I] gained a lot in the last practice, and then in qualifying I was only three tenths behind the leader.”

The Swede added that his game plan in the races was “keeping on track and taking the points” – exactly as he did in race three.

“Ending the weekend [with] P2 is fantastic,” he said. “I really couldn’t hope for anything other, so I’m super happy.”

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All of the top 10 in the drivers’ standings started all races in the top half of the field – except for one driver. KMR Sport’s Alex O’Grady qualified sixth for race one and third for race two but was later disqualified for having too much camber and was forced to start all three races from 25th and last.

Despite the disappointment of being disqualified, he was encouraged by his performance in qualifying.

“The qualifying session was extremely positive,” he said. “After spending Thursday and Friday trying to get somewhere with the car, we got it right for qualifying. I was the first person into the 1:27s in the session and set two almost identical laps, putting me P6 overall and P3 for race two.”

O’Grady made it up to 15th, 12th and 13th in the three races. In 58 minutes of racing, he made up 35 places.

“It was quite fun starting from the back,” he said. “There was zero pressure, and I knew I could come through [the field].”

O’Grady had actually made up a 36th position in race three. He crossed the line in 12th place, but the stewards judged that O’Grady was at fault for a collision with Mayer Deonarine at the final corner and handed him a five-second penalty that dropped him behind the Canadian.

The stewards reported that O’Grady had “attempted an overtake on car 44 [Deonarine] entering turn 12, [but] no overlap was established before the car ahead (car 44) turned into the corner.” The Irishman told Feeder Series that Deonarine turned into him while on the inside line and that he “didn’t agree with the penalty” but couldn’t argue with the decision made.

O’Grady leaves Donington Park ninth in the drivers’ standings and as the lead KMR driver with 30 points to his name, 12 of which came from positions he made up in the third race. Still, the Irishman was left wondering what could have been.

“Ultimately, it’s a disappointment,” he said. “Something like this shouldn’t happen and as a team we’ve learned, and I’m sure it’ll never happen again. But to come away with 30 points on the board and ninth in the championship, it’s great damage limitation.

“These things happen, but in such a close championship fight where every point counts, I am disappointed as I know we could have come away with podiums if not even a win.”

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Under other circumstances, O’Grady could have challenged the Elite contingent for podiums while at a team that had no prior experience of the GB3-turned-GB4 machine. 

Despite extensive testing by 2023 GB4 champion Tom Mills, KMR Sport sit eighth in the teams’ standings, already 112 points behind leaders Elite. It’s a notable setback for an outfit that won the teams’ title for the past three years and a sign of another subtle shift that happened over the winter.

Four of the top five teams in the championship – Elite Motorsport, Hillspeed, Douglas Motorsport and Fortec Motorsport – have previous experience with the Tatuus MSV-022 used in GB3 from 2022 to 2024. Fourth-placed Graham Brunton Racing are the highest-placed team to have no prior knowledge of the car, while none of the bottom six teams ran a full GB3 season last year. 

GB4’s new formula was always going to shake up the pecking order, but the clues so far suggest that past experience will play a significant role in how the future unfolds.

Header photo credit: Dom Bessell