Alisha Palmowski stretched her F1 ACADEMY title lead with a home win on British Grand Prix Sunday at Silverstone as the record crowd was entertained by a series of single seater support races featuring future stars. The Red Bull backed driver, who is part of the Motorsport UK High Performance Academy, held off a race-long challenge from Wera Tools F4 British Championship regular and wild card entry Chiara Bättig, who had pole position for the feature race.
Despite a mid-race safety car, Palmowski resumed the lead, with Emma Felbermayr completing the podium.
Previously, Audi-backed Felbermayr won the opening F1 ACADEMY race – the first to be held at Silverstone – fending off Nina Gademan and Ella Lloyd, who lead Rachel Robertson and Palmowski home for a British 3-4-5.
Freddie Slater came agonisingly close to a maiden FIA Formula 3 victory at his home event in a thrilling feature race in which he battled with Théophile Nael and team-mate Matteo De Palo. Fending off the former at the start, Slater came under attack from the other Trident car, the two taking turns to lead the race. De Palo was leading as the safety car interrupted the closing laps, setting up an exciting one-lap sprint to the flag.
At the restart De Palo locked up several times but defended aggressively from Slater, who made contact on more than one occasion. On the run from Copse, the chasing pack caught up with first Nael passing as the Briton fell to fifth place at the line, just one place ahead of title rival Ugo Ugochukwu.
The day before, Ugochukwu took a dominant sprint race win, the US driver celebrating July 4th in style as he extended his title lead.
The F2 sprint race saw Red Bull-backed Nikola Tsolov almost cement his graduation to Formula 1 with a last-lap overtake on title rival and polesitter Gabriele Minì to claim the win. Tsolov doubled up in the feature race to further boost his title campaign, heading Rafael Villagomez, who passed Kush Maini late on to secure second place.