George Russell will be hard to beat this year but on this evidence Alex Gill and Nathan Aston are going to have a good try. All have won Cadet titles but only Russell has already won the ultimate prize in KF3, the European Championship.

Alex Gill was the early leader in KF3 Qualifying but was beaten in the end by Jacques Morley with George Russell 2nd and the Croatian driver Martin Kodric 3rd. Sammy Oram-Jones took 6th after his original chassis was destroyed earlier in the morning and Millennium had an epic job to build him up a new one. In Heat 1 there was a big snarl up on the first hairpin and Russell took the lead, going on to win from Gill and Kodric.

Russell and Aston stayed at the front of Heat 2 throughout with Bradley Shaw taking 3rd early on, also without much opposition.

Final 1

Russell started on pole next to Gill with Aston 3rd. Aston was pushed wide on the back straight but kept going and there was an extra rolling lap while he got back in position. Russell held the lead while Kodric roared up to 2nd. He was a bit wild and Gill was waiting for a mistake in 3rd.

Russell however was the fastest driver on the track and by the time there were five minutes to go the order was still the same and stayed like that to the end with Russell miles in the lead. The lap times were going down and a dry line was soon to appear but the clouds were black.

Final 2

Russell led from pole in the dry race and Kodric dropped back, allowing Gill and Shaw to fight for 2nd. By the time Shaw took it Russell had got away. Gill came back for another go and took 2nd at the hairpin, now followed through by Aston. The Wright driver was running faster than Russell and was reeling him in at the rate of a tenth a lap. With about five minutes to go Gill took the lead going on to the back straight and held it for a couple of laps before Russell regained control on the new section.

On the last lap it started to rain slightly and Gill had to settle for 2nd. Aston took 3rd and still felt there was a lot of room for improvement. Russell described his day as “tough and successful” having won both in the wet and the dry.

Alex Taylor improved to 9th in Final 2 after coming 15th in Final 1. Easykart graduate Ronan McKenzie had a tough introduction to KF3 but kept his equilibrium after signing to Dino in the week before the event and had very little experience on the track.