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Historic Formula 3 Championship 2023 Provisional Points [pdf]
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23rd-24th April 2022 - Snetterton
Hibberd completes Goodwood MM treble
Series newcomers took the headlines in the opening rounds of the HSCC Historic Formula 3 Championship with young Samuel Harrison taking an impressive debut double win in the Speedsport Chevron B15.
Despite the rigours of Goodwood, a lovely selection of cars arrived at Snetterton for a double-header to open the championship season on the 300 circuit of the Norfolk venue. Ian Bankhurst just set the pace in qualifying to take pole in the rare Alexis Mk8 but had highly-rated teenager Harrison alongside as he had his first run out in Mike O’Brien's Chevron, which had been raced at Goodwood by fellow youngster Horatio Fitz-Simon.
At the start of the opening race towards the end of Saturday afternoon, it all went wrong for Bankhurst who simply couldn't see the lights with a relatively low sun and was virtually last away. He said: “I only realised it was time to go when the last cars passed me!”
Though he was last into the first corner, Bankhurst quickly set about making up lost ground and was soon up to third as Harrison set a searing pace from Simon Armer’s March 703. Before long Bankhurst was up to second as Armer struggled a little with pace, feeling that he hadn't really quite got the setup as he would have liked. However, Harrison was too far up the road for Bankhurst to make any real in-roads and that was how they finished for the overall podium. Harrison loved every minute of driving the one litre screamer and found it an interesting comparison to his Historic Formula Ford Merlyn, which he was also racing over the weekend.
Fourth place was the subject of a wonderful battle between two more category newcomers as Josh Sharp (Chevron B17) and Mike Lamplough (Chevron B15) raced wheel-to-wheel for the entire 20 minutes and traded the place numerous times, with Sharp ahead by just half a second when it really mattered.
Both were out in Chevrons for the first time, with Lamplough having his first single-seater race since 1994 in the ex-Jim Blockley car. Sharp, meanwhile, was making a return to single seaters that he once raced as a relative youngster in the 1980s. His VSCC Riley TT Sprite was not the perfect warm-up for a 1-litre Chevron but he was loving every minute of the entire experience including the paddock atmosphere and camaraderie. Eventually, Sharp got the verdict, but it could have gone either way after a fine contest. Rounding out the top six was Simon Haughton (Chevron B15) while also in contention were Leif Bosson (Brabham BT28), Gil Duffy (Brabham BT21) and Simon Etherington (Brabham BT15).
On Sunday, it was Harrison who was slow away from the grid but he was quickly able to close down early leader Bankhurst and move ahead to complete an impressive double victory in his first taste of Historic F3. They went well clear of third placed Armer while Haughton raced hard to take fourth as Sharp and Bosson battled mightily for fifth with Sharp taking the place by a tiny margin.
Paul Lawrence
