Hillspeed driver Dante Vinci produces his best performance of the season
Dante Vinci produced the best performance of his rookie GB3 Championship campaign so far at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium over the weekend, with the Hillspeed driver racing to ninth place in round four before then taking 13th position in round five.
Impressing from the opening day of pre-event testing, where he was fastest of all, the Australian delivered a season-best qualifying with ninth and eighth for the two races, before then producing an especially notable drive in the opening encounter on Saturday for the Markham Vale team.
Team-mate Aurelia Nobels also showed progress since the first event of the season at Silverstone in April, converting 19th on the grid in round four to a best-yet 14th place result at her ‘home’ track. While competing as a Brazilian driver, having grown up there, she has Belgian family heritage.
Peter Bouzinelos also aimed for gains since the championship curtain-raiser and he was well on course in Spa’s opening contest, running very impressively in 11th position before an unfortunate racing incident at Les Combes on lap three triggered retirement. In race two he had to settle for 17th place.
Only two races ultimately took place this weekend at Spa, heavy rain delaying the first GB3 encounter and a packed timetable meaning round six was cancelled. News from the championship organisers is awaited on whether this race will be re-scheduled at a future event.
Richard Ollerenshaw, Hillspeed Team Principal, said: “We started the weekend strong in testing, particularly with Dante, and we were exceptionally happy with the work Mountune and MSV have done with the engine package since the problems which were experienced at Silverstone. Qualifying was good from Dante, as was race one, for race two though he was held out wide at La Source and so out of the train down to Eau Rouge, which compromised him. “Aurelia had a good race on Saturday, good progress, but in race two she had contact early on which then made it an uphill battle.
"Peter was going very strongly in race one until the racing incident, it was a 50/50 but he still ended up with a grid penalty which was disappointing. Race two was all about damage limitation really, but there was quite a bit of contact again which wasn’t ideal.” There is now a five-week break in the GB3 calendar with rounds seven, eight and nine taking place over the weekend 4th/5th July at the Hungaroring near Budapest.