Success has been rife for the Brits in the last week or so all across the world of sport. Andy Murray’s historical win at Wimbledon last weekend has been a long time coming to say the least, and the triumph of the British & Irish Lions with their first Lions Series win for 16 years has also gone down a storm.
Overlooked by the mainstream sports media however has been the incredible two race weekends witnessed in GP2 and GP3 at Silverstone and the Nürburgring for the British and German Grands Prix.
In the GP2 series, Sam Bird (image via
GP2Series.com) mounted a series title challenge with his Feature Race win, which, with his inability to compete in the Silverstone young driver test at Silverstone this month, couldn’t have come at a better time to get noticed by potential F1 employers of the future. In the Sprint Race, Hilmer Motorsport’s Jon Lancaster made it an all Brit weekend with his impressive win (in just his third round this season) and James Calado occupied the 3rd position podium place to claw back some points in his championship bid.
Lancaster proved to be on fine form once again less than a week later in Germany with his second Sprint Race victory, making many wonder why he wasn’t snapped up for a full time GP2 seat earlier in the season.
In GP3, Jack Harvey kept the British crowds cheering at Silverstone with his Feature Race win: his first for this season, and followed it up with a podium in Race 1 at the Nürburgring.
Other Brits in fine form across both weekends included Carlin’s Nick Yelloly (3rd in the British Grand Prix Race 2) and Melville McKee taking his maiden GP3 win in the German Race 2 for Bamboo Engineering.
With the disappointments so far for British fans in Formula 1 (Lewis Hamilton has admitted he is not quite on the pace whilst Jenson Button has been given a car which can barely scrape into the points), perhaps now is a good time for the British drivers in those supporting categories to really make a name for themselves and promote the series’ to a broader audience?
