After impressing as a single-seater rookie last year, Callum Voisin remained in the GB3 Championship with Rodin Carlin in 2023 with the sole aim of winning the title. And, while the 17-year-old delivered on that expectation, he was pushed all the way by British Formula 4 graduates Alex Dunne and Joseph Loake.
Fast but error-prone in 2022, Voisin entered his sophomore campaign with a steelier approach, and it was his improved consistency that proved key, only failing to make the podium at one of the eight events.
“That was probably the main focus compared to last year, just staying consistent,” points out Voisin. “The highs were really high last year but then the lows were way too low. I think we’ve done that relatively well.”
But it was Loake who grabbed the early advantage. He stunned by winning from pole on his debut at Oulton Park ahead of JHR Developments stablemate Matthew Rees, another second-year driver eyeing a title bid.
After joining Arden VRD on the eve of the season, James Hedley took a commanding wet-weather win in race two ahead of Voisin, who began his assault with two podiums. Dunne meanwhile made a low-key start to his attempt to follow up his British F4 title from 2022 with another crown, the Hitech GP driver losing ground with an off in race two. The curtain-raiser had provided a hint of the fluctuating fortunes the lead contenders would experience over the rest of the season.
Voisin’s team-mate John Bennett was the next to star when he converted a double pole into his first two single-seater victories at a slippery Silverstone, but cruelly he was denied both triumphs by post-race penalties, the second of which resulted from contact that spun Dunne into retirement. Loake was the beneficiary – he inherited both wins to extend his points lead, while Voisin salvaged a best result of third.
Loake ended a difficult visit to Spa-Francorchamps with just second in the reversed-grid race, while his two main rivals hit form. After taking a double pole, Voisin was no match in the races for Dunne, who kick-started his season with two comfortable victories, but a pair of seconds was enough for Voisin to overhaul Loake. Next up, it was Dunne’s turn to assume the points lead at Snetterton after Voisin was again unable to convert pole into victory in the second race, in which he was taken out by Douglas Motorsport’s Tymek Kucharczyk.
The second half of the season started slowly for the three main contenders, who were put in the shade at Silverstone by Rees and McKenzy Cresswell. Voisin added another podium to reclaim the points advantage before the final contest succumbed to poor weather.
Both Loake and Voisin enjoyed an important return to form at Brands Hatch, with Loake beating his rival to victory in race one. The pair went wheel to wheel at the start of race two, this time Voisin prevailing to finally take his first win of 2023.
“It was long overdue,” reckons Voisin. “We came close many times. We’ve not been the quickest all the time but we’ve picked up points where we can and I think that’s why we’ve been leading the championship.”
"For whatever reason, I’ve shone a bit more on the European tracks" Alex Dunne
Dunne suffered another non-finish after contact with Rees as he tried to recover from a disappointing qualifying, leaving him 42 points behind. Needing a big performance at GB3’s first ever trip to Zandvoort, the Irishman delivered exactly that with a dominant victory brace in the first two races, while Voisin recovered from a collision in qualifying to salvage two top-seven finishes.
“I think we’ve had good pace on the English tracks but we’ve sometimes had a bit of bad luck – for whatever reason, I’ve shone a bit more on the European tracks,” relates Dunne. “There’s always been just little things, and because the grid is so close those things look bigger than they are.”
Four points now separated the championship’s top three, but Voisin made the best use of just six corners of green-flag running in Zandvoort’s reversed-grid race to gain 10 places to fifth. That gave him a 13-point cushion over Loake heading into the final round, with Dunne a further four points adrift.
“We made the best out of a bad situation,” sums up Voisin. “We made up positions when we had to, and that’s all you can really ask for. To only concede one point [to Loake] over the weekend was a miracle.”
Voisin produced his best performance of the season at the Donington Park decider, taking his fifth and sixth poles to secure the Jack Cavill Pole Position Cup for the second consecutive year. He led home Rees in race one for a second win of 2023. Dunne finished third, while Loake struggled to 10th after a first-corner collision with Cresswell.
Dunne needed to beat Voisin in race two to retain any realistic title chances, and pounced on a mistake from his rival to complete a feisty overtake and record his fifth victory, while Loake’s championship hopes were extinguished in eighth.
“I was never expecting to be in the top three in the championship this year,” admits Loake. “I do have to be quite proud of what I’ve done.”
Voisin started from 22nd in the reversed-grid climax, and made up 10 places to run directly behind Dunne before a mid-race safety-car period. Dunne made up two more spots at the restart, but it mattered not, with 12th for Voisin enough to seal the crown.
“It’s really difficult to put into words,” muses Voisin. “We’ve made the most of it. We got better towards the end of the season and it’s brilliant to finish on a high.”
Reinvigorated by a switch to Elite Motorsport for 2023, Cresswell would have been in the thick of the championship fight throughout had it not been for a disastrous weekend at Oulton Park, where he scored just four points. Podiums at the next two rounds followed, and a win and a stronger second half of the season kept his remote title hopes alive until the final round. By contrast, Rees began as one of the title favourites but, despite being one of the most consistent qualifiers, he only won once.
Kucharczyk looked a dark horse at the beginning of the year thanks to some rapid pace, which initially secured him a double pole at round two only for his car to fail post-qualifying scrutineering. He scored two mid-season podiums and his Snetterton collision with Voisin cost him a third but, grappling with budget issues, the popular Pole’s form tailed off in the final three rounds.
Elsewhere, Daniel Mavlyutov took four reversed-grid race wins for Hillspeed, with team-mate Gerrard Xie, Elite’s Oliver Stewart and Noah Ping (Arden) also taking a race three victory over the campaign.
"The highs were really high last year but then the lows were way too low. I think we’ve done that relatively well" Callum Voisin
There was no rest for Voisin following his title success, heading straight to Imola for a two-day FIA Formula 3 test before joining fellow finalist Loake at Silverstone for the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver assessment days.
“It’s going to be a long winter trying to find the budget, but winning the title has done a tremendous amount of good,” concludes Voisin of his 2024 F3 hopes.
Autosport’s top five GB3 drivers of 2023
5. James Hedley
A switch to a third team in two years yielded more success for Hedley, despite a truncated pre-season spent trying to find the budget to race. Two fine early wins kept him in the title hunt before being hampered by incidents and inconsistency, but it was a largely solid campaign nonetheless.
4. McKenzy Cresswell
The lost fourth title contender, who matched the consistency of the championship’s top three from the second round onwards. He scored more points than anybody else during his late-season podium run, but was disappointed to only visit the top step once despite a big step up in performance from 2022.
3. Joseph Loake
Exceeded even his own expectations by fighting for the title from the start, winning twice as many times as Voisin and often putting his team-mate Matthew Rees in the shade, but was also inconsistent and crucially was not able to deliver his best form at the final two rounds.
2. Alex Dunne
Took the most wins of anyone, and was untouchable at Spa and Zandvoort, but couldn’t deliver those peaks elsewhere. Some average qualifying performances and incidents not entirely of his own making proved costly in the end, despite his efforts to recover ground at the final two events.
1. Callum Voisin
Won fewer races than his main rivals but had fewer off days, making no major errors while accumulating the most poles and podium finishes. Strongest of the title contenders when it mattered at the Donington decider, which is why he edges Dunne into number one spot.
Mills makes it look easy with dominant GB4 triumph
GB4’s sophomore season was a one-sided affair, with Tom Mills taking the title in crushing style for family team KMR Sport. Mills was the only driver in the field who continued from last year, and he used that experience to record 10 wins across the first six events, beating outgoing champion Nikolas Taylor’s 2022 tally, to seal the crown with a meeting to spare.
The first race of the season proved to be an outlier, with Mills pipped to victory by team-mate and series debutant Jeremy Fairbairn after a thrilling dice between the pair. Mills responded by winning a wet race two to claim the championship lead, which he would ultimately not relinquish.
Despite budget issues only keeping him on the grid on a round-by-round basis, Mills continued to notch up the wins. Seventh in the reversed-grid race at Brands Hatch secured him the title, with KMR also clinching the teams’ spoils for a second year in a row.
“It means a lot,” says Mills of his title success. “It’s been a lot of work this year to keep going meeting-on-meeting. Even at Oulton, we still didn’t have the budget for the next round. It was just thanks to the results there that we managed to piece it together.
"Coming back does work, you learn so much. I’m much more mature now" Tom Mills
“As a second-year driver, everyone has been expecting me to win. It shows coming back does work, you learn so much. I’m much more mature now. Last year some of those races I probably wouldn’t have won because I would have made some mistakes, but this year I’ve taken it in my stride a lot better.”
With Mills sitting out the Donington Park finale, Cooper Webster (Evans GP) scored an emphatic victory hat-trick to secure runner-up spot in the standings. The Australian, who is currently second in the points in the S5000 series in his homeland, also won twice earlier in the campaign at Snetterton, the only round where Mills was put in the shade, and finished second on six occasions.
“It’s good to have a whole round where I was the quickest,” Webster says of his Snetterton performance. “I’m really proud of how the whole season’s gone, especially the first time on these tracks.”
Liam McNeilly took two reversed-grid triumphs and third in the table for single-seater newcomer Fox Motorsport, while GB4 scholarship winner Colin Queen (Fortec) visited the podium on 10 occasions but missed out on the top step.
