A strong weekend at the British Grand Prix for Rodin Motorsport's Formula 3 team saw 32 points and the first silverware of the season head back to Farnham after strong performances for both Callum Voisin and Piotr Wisnicki.
The championship once again joined the Formula One circus at the home of British Motorsport for a semi home race for the team, who are based just miles away in Surrey. Silverstone is a circuit known well to both the team and its drivers, as a regular on domestic and international championships.
The weekend had all the characteristics of a British event, most notably the weather which played a key role across the weekend starting with a wet free practice on the Friday, which only saw teams get 20 minutes of dry running. The final times in the session looked positive for the team, who showed strong pace in both the wet and dry conditions as they headed into qualifying.
Later in the day, qualifying had all the drama needed to tee up an exciting weekend as the pit wall looked eagerly at the weather radar, expecting a downpour to appear. With most able to get early banker laps on slick tyres, when the rain came, it looked as if those times would stick for the rest of the session. However, when a drying line appeared with just minutes to go, Callum Voisin showed impressive pace in those conditions and claimed his season best qualifying of P9. Times were tight, with Joseph Loake within a second of the pole sitter down in P16.
After a day of anticipation due to a rain delay moving Saturday's Sprint Race, Formula 3 finally took to the track as the last event of the day, providing a climactic finish for the British fans. With reverse grid qualification, Callum Voisin started in the thick of it and showed positive pace to be able to hold off those around him and bring his Rodin machine home in P4 for his first points of the season. In an eventful race, fellow Rodin drivers Joseph Loake and Piotr Wisnicki kept a clean race to come home P15 and P16 respectively.
An early start on Grand Prix Sunday saw the Rodin drivers take to the track for the Feature Race. A bold strategy from the Rodin pit wall saw Voisin and Wisnicki the only drivers to start the wet race on slick tyres, a choice many opted for after the formation lap and they saw the drying conditions. Utilising his tyre advantage to good effect, Voisin was able to take the lead of the race.
A well timed safety car as rain began to fall once more saw lots of the field dive into the pits for wets, but Voisin stuck to the plan on the hard tyre, hoping for conditions to come back to him towards the latter stages of the race. A third stint under the safety car saw the pack tightly bunched in the final 15 minutes of the race, turning it into an all out sprint.
Whilst under this final safety car period, the wet runners cleared a dry line which allowed those on slicks like Voisin to bide their time and strike when the crossover point came with 10 minutes to go. Both Voisin and Wisnicki charged through the field, the latter making 25 places throughout the race, from his starting point in P30 to finish P5 on the road.
Voisin crossed the line in P1 and won the race on track, but a harsh penalty saw him demoted to P3, for what became his and the teams first visit to the rostrum for this season, with Wisnicki also claiming his first points of the season. Joseph Loake had a difficult afternoon in his Rodin machine, carrying damage for a large amount of the race that halted his progress.
With Loake's double points finish in Monaco, the team now sits P8 in the championship with 40 points, just 8 off of closest rival Van Amersfoort in P7.
The team will return to racing action in a week's time inHungary for Round 8 of the championship.
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