The perfect day for pole-sitter Marvin Kirchhöfer: The German started with a superb qualifying and then converted a great start into a win, withstanding huge pressure from Arden International’s Emil Bernstorff in the closing stages. In his home race, Matthew Parry pocketed his maiden podium to cross the line in third.
It was a clean start from the twenty-four drivers on the Silverstone grid for the opening race of Round 3 of the 2015 season. Kirchhöfer and Bernstorff maintained their places from the front row and pulled a small margin, whilst Campos Racing’s Alex Palou lost a place to Parry. Jimmy Eriksson also carved his way into fourth, displacing the Spaniard on the first lap. Esteban Ocon also made a move on Adderly Fong at the start to sneak into seventh position.
In the early laps, Kirchhöfer held a small deficit of just over 1s back to Bernstorff with Parry also hot on his heels. Bernstorff posted the fastest lap of the race after six laps to show his German rival his intentions. Unfortunately for Palou, he retired with technical gremlins from fifth position, the rookie still awaiting his debut points in his GP3 campaign after impressive qualifying results.
At the midway point of the race, two seconds covered the top three. Soon after, Trident’s Luca Ghiotto lit up the timing screen posting consecutive fastest laps in fifth place. Meanwhile, Ocon had his mirrors full of Kevin Ceccon, whilst his teammate Kirchhöfer also had to defend and look over his shoulder to an Arden Motorsport driver.
In the final few laps, Bernstorff closed the gap to Kirchhöfer to just half a second with fantastic wheel to wheel action between the two. Kirchhöfer did all he could to resist the best efforts from the Brit, Bernstorff of course was desperate to achieve his first win of the season and in front of his home fans. The Brit was eating away at the ART Grand Prix ace in every sector but on the final lap, the German found some extra pace to keep P1 and cross the line to win race one.
Bernstorff and Parry completed the rostrum in front of their home fans, whilst Ghiotto got the better of Eriksson on the final lap to take fourth place and also pocketed two further points for the fastest lap. Behind Eriksson: Ocon, Ceccon, Ralph Boschung, Artur Janosz and Matheo Tuscher rounded out the top ten points’ positions.
Ghiotto retains the Series by four points from Kirchhöfer (80 and 76 respectively), whilst Bernstorff and Ocon complete the top four in the Drivers’ Standings. ART Grand Prix hold the lead in the Teams’ Standings on 129 points with Trident on 99 and Arden International on 75.
Race 2 will commence at 08.25am local time tomorrow with Jenzer Motorsport’s Ralph Boschung starting from reverse pole.
