After a tough mid-season spell in the GB3 Championship, Rodin Motorsport’s Abbi Pulling rediscovered her form at Brands Hatch, securing her first podium in the reverse-grid final race. Speaking to Feeder Series afterwards, she discussed her ‘up and down’ 2025 season so far.

By George Sanderson

Prior to the sixth round of the season at Brands Hatch, more than seven years had passed since a female driver had taken a podium in the United Kingdom’s top single-seater series. Pulling’s third-place finish in race three, however, ended that deficit.

The 22-year-old became the first woman to achieve a podium finish in the series since its rebrand to GB3 in 2021 as well as the first since 5 August 2018, when the series ran under the British F3 guise. That day, at the same venue, three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick – currently second in the European Le Mans Series’ LMP2 standings – won for Douglas Motorsport in the reverse-grid second race.

“I didn’t even think about that, to be honest,” Pulling told Feeder Series. “I’m just here to race. It’s nice to set some records or accolades, if that’s what you want to call it, along the way.”

Snapping records was a familiar feeling for Pulling during her stellar 2024 F1 Academy campaign. With nine victories from the 14 races, she set a new record for most wins in a single season in the championship while setting new highs for total pole positions and podium finishes at 10 and 14 respectively – all while having seven fewer races in the season than in 2023.

By claiming the F1 Academy drivers’ title, Pulling secured a fully funded 2025 GB3 seat with Rodin Motorsport, later becoming a brand ambassador for the Rodin Cars organisation after choosing to leave the Alpine Academy. With this step up from the F4 level came a lot of attention.

“I’ve got so much support, so many people behind me, and sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself for that. I know that I’ve got a lot of people looking up to me and I just want to do them all justice,” she said. “I just want to race and do well no matter what. It’s nice to be able to inspire those young girls coming in, though.”

Ahead of the penultimate weekend of the season at Donington Park, Pulling is 12th in the standings on 163 points. She admitted it hadn’t all gone her way this year.

“It’s been really up and down,” she said. “The start of the season was really hard. It’s been a lot of resetting, a lot of taking another stab at it.”

Pulling impressed immediately in the GB3 season opener at Silverstone, claiming fifth- and sixth-place finishes in her first two races following an equally encouraging set of results in pre-season testing. But from the final race at Silverstone onwards, her luck began to change.

Starting from fifth in race three, Pulling held position on the opening lap until reaching the Hamilton Straight. It was here that her race ended abruptly, as contact with Xcel Motorsport’s Dion Gowda sent both spearing into the wall on the inside.

“Since then, [after] that race at Silverstone, I had a few things out of my control,” she said. “The car was a bit performance-limited, which is a bit frustrating. Spa and Zandvoort [the following two rounds] were… I’ve kind of blocked them out of my mind, to be honest!”

Across those two rounds, Pulling failed to finish inside the top 10 in any race. Her teammates, Alex Ninovic and Gianmarco Pradel, both secured podiums, with Ninovic also taking two race victories.

“After what happened at the start of the season, [I’ve] just felt like I was chasing my tail a little bit,” she said. “[I] started the season in a really great place, and I’ve had those two really horrible race weekends.”

Pulling returned to the top 10 in Budapest, taking a 10th-place finish in race one followed by two ninth places in races two and three. Behind that upturn in form, however, lay a tough psychological battle, as the pressure she was putting on herself took its toll.

“[I] went into Budapest and just got in my head a little bit,” Pulling explained. “[It was] almost a bit reminiscent of 2023 where I was double pole in Austria and got it taken away from me.”

That double pole position came all the way at the start of her first F1 Academy season, when Rodin Carlin were disqualified from qualifying for the team’s installing of non-homologated parts on their cars. She sought to make up for that early disappointment, but it took her five races to secure her first podium of the season and another three rounds before she took pole again.

With those mental roadblocks in mind, Pulling now dedicates more time to work on her headspace and psychological well-being when competing at the track.

“I do a lot of work on the mental side,” she said. “I think it’s really important. Although maybe in the last couple of races I’ve not shown the greatest mindset at times, we learn from things. It’s all about developing.”

Pulling recognised that car performance has hampered her in earlier rounds this season but said that any mistakes from round three at Spa onwards were down to her.

“I’ve done some good and done some bad,” she added.

The second Silverstone race weekend in August demonstrated this trend perfectly. In race one, Pulling impressed by climbing from 12th on the grid to ninth before ultimately dropping back to her starting position on the final lap.

Her second race was short-lived; she retired on the second lap with suspension damage after being hit by Argenti with Prema debutant August Raber. But Pulling put the disappointment behind her with an eye-catching display in race three.

She made up three places on the opening lap to climb from 13th to 10th, having even overtaken her championship-leading teammate Alex Ninovic. She ultimately couldn’t keep the Australian behind her but did achieve her best result in 13 races, crossing the line in seventh after a double pass on Michael Shin and Enzo Tarnvanichkul on lap 10.

Naturally, it is Pulling’s performances at Brands Hatch that have caught the most attention this season. Despite a disappointing 10th in qualifying – Pulling told Feeder Series that ‘there was potential for one or two more places’ – she produced strong performances in the races.

She gained two places in race one to finish eighth, even challenging teammate Pradel for seventh around a notoriously difficult circuit to overtake. In race two, which was delayed by nearly four hours because of a crash in the preceding Ginetta Juniors race, Pulling started and finished in ninth place.

Pulling started race three fourth but dropped to sixth at the start, falling behind Kai Daryanani and the fast-starting Deagen Fairclough from 10th on the grid.

“[In] the races, I always showed aggression, always showed decent pace,” she said. “Starting P4, I just fluffed the start a little bit, which was fully my mistake, but picked up the pieces in the end when the others made mistakes.”

The first of those came from Elite Motorsport’s Will Macintyre, who left the track at high speed at Hawthorn Bend on lap 11 to bring out the safety car. With the pack bunched up for the restart three laps later, Pulling was fifth, watching Fairclough pull alongside Daryanani heading down Pilgrim’s Drop, when she decided to have a look up the inside of the pair at Hawthorn Bend. It was a small move but enough to force a mistake from Fairclough, who touched the rear of Daryanani at Hawthorn Bend, took to the gravel and spun.

Fairclough rejoined at the back of the field, while Daryanani dropped behind Pulling and Yamakoshi and eventually finished fifth as Pulling held on to third for the final two laps.

“I’m really happy to get the podium. Of course, I want to be doing it in main races. I don’t want to just be able to get these results in the reverse-grid races,” she said.

“I know that I’m capable of doing things like this and qualifying at the front and being fast, bringing trophies home. I’ve just not quite pieced it together all the time this year, [so I’ll] just try and put a weekend together in these last two weekends.”

Donington Park and Monza will close out GB3’s 2025 season, and while Pulling has tested the Tatuus MSV GB3-025 at Donington, she has not raced at Monza since her double podium there in F1 Academy two years ago. Still, she’s ready to conquer the unknown, beginning with the time she spends in the simulator.

“I really use the simulator quite religiously, to be honest! I’m a really big advocate for the simulator and working with the team, seeing their previous data [in] the old GB3 car,” she said. “The team have got some great data from that and video. Although it’s not super similar to this car, it’s better than nothing.”

Pulling has yet to confirm her racing plans for 2026, but she did sign a multi-year deal to be the Nissan Formula E team’s rookie and simulator driver in June. But first, she has clear goals for what she hopes to achieve before the end of the season in GB3.

“I’ve got a target [of points] that I set at the start of the year and [we’re] clawing away, getting closer to that,” she said. “It’s nice to go into the break with a little bit more of a clear mind, showing some really great pace, and the car is in a really great place.”

Header photo credit: Rodin Motorsport