Arden Motorsport will head out to the world-famous Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium this weekend (23-25 July) for the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship’s now-annual overseas trip.
The Banbury team head out to the high-speed, 4.3-mile Spa circuit in the heart of the Ardennes Forest buoyed by a recent run of good form in the UK’s premier tier of single seater racing.
Donington Park a fortnight ago yielded yet more silverware for the Red Arrows, including a podium double for Alex Connor and a hat-trick of top-five finishes for rookie sensation Roman Bilinski.
Although the team will only run a single car for Bilinski for this weekend’s action-packed triple header as Frederick Lubin continues to sit out on medical advice, the team remains as motivated as ever to bring back a strong set of results in his absence.
Bilinski’s pace straight out of the box with virtually no mileage in the British F3 car, plus his display of race craft to battle it out with a host of the series’ established names at the front in all three races, has fuelled excitement as the Polish racer prepares to build on a positive debut outing.
The 17-year-old will have a pair of practice sessions to get acclimatised to one of the calendar’s most-challenging venues on Friday, before that all-important qualifying session at 18:25 (CET).
Two races follow on Saturday, the first at 14:20 and the other at 18:40, before the curtain comes down on another weekend at 10:50 on Sunday.
As per usual, live, free-to-view coverage will be available on British F3’s YouTube channel and social media platforms, though the exact sessions remains to be confirmed.
Gary Ward, Arden British F3 Team Manager said:
“We’ve enjoyed a really strong run of form in British F3 recently, so our objective is very much to keep that going at Spa this weekend.
“Although it’s a shame to not have Frederick with us this weekend, everybody at the team sends him our best wishes and continued support. It’ll just make it all the better when he’s able to get back in the car.
“Roman’s performance at Donington Park was seriously impressive, especially considering how close this field is, and how little testing he’s had compared to them.
“If he can carry that momentum forward to this weekend and apply himself in the same way, we see no reason why the same results won’t follow.”
Roman Bilinski (#4) said:
“I’m really looking forward to this weekend, for two reasons. Firstly, because we enjoyed such a strong outing at Donington Park, so I’m feeling confident we’ll be able to fight up at the sharp end again.
“But also, because it’s my first trip to race overseas, and what better place to do it than Spa? It’s such a historic circuit, and it’s really satisfying to drive. I’ve only lapped it on the sim so there will be a certain amount of getting ‘up to speed’, but I think that’s the case for the majority of the field.
“Scoring three top-six finishes at Donington has definitely given me a platform to build from, but I’m still not setting any specific goals heading into the weekend. The key here is we keep learning, keep improving and put ourselves in the best possible position when it comes to making decisions at the end of the season.
“If we can achieve all that, then we’ll be in a good place.”