GT Academy Winner Jann Mardenborough Starts His GP3 Career

2014_GP3_Jann_Barcelona_Test

As the GP3 season gets underway tomorrow, Jann Mardenborough starts his next step towards a career in F1.

2014_GP3_Jann_BarcelonaTNDriving the Arden International #6 car – the seat vacated by 2013 series champion Daniil Kvyat as he moved up to F1 – Jann enters qualifying for the first round tomorrow morning having impressed in pre-season testing. His first laps of the 2.9 mile Catalunya circuit in practice see him within 1.5s of the lead car in his rookie season.

Arden are owned by Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing, and GP3 forms the first stages of Jann’s training on the Red Bull Young Driver Program. Fourteen drivers from the scheme have so far graduated to F1, including current World Driver’s Champion Sebastian Vettel, while two other current F1 drivers can count GP3 amongst their training.

This season, GP3 will consist of 18 races (9 feature, 9 sprint) supporting 9 rounds of the Formula One World Championship at Catalunya, Red Bull Ring, Silverstone, Hockenheim, Hungaroring, Spa, Monza, Sochi and Yas Marina.

Qualifying for the sprint race at Catalunya gets underway at 07.45 GMT/UTC on Saturday May 10th, with the race itself at 15.20 GMT/UTC following the F1 qualifying. The feature race follows at 07.25 GMT/UTC on Sunday. Live timing is available from the official GP3 Series website, while TV broadcasts will depend on your region.

Images courtesy of GP3Series.com.

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Comments (19)

  1. dragonspatial

    Amazing that someone could get their start in a sim-cade game like Gran Turismo and become a pro driver. I hope they keep up the program. Too bad they were not around in the early 1980’s…

  2. sangdude82

    Jann has finished 14th. Not bad for his debut race. Do they have more than one race per round?

    1. Louie_Schumii

      Yeah they do being the support series for F1. He finished 14th again on race 2 but was running as high as 6th or 7th during a safety car period just before he spun it on the safety car in-lap. To be fair the new GP3 cars are very tail-happy and conditions were quite damp.

      At least we’ll have a GT Academy winner to keep an eye on during some F1 weekends.

    2. sangdude82

      Thanks for letting me know, Louie_Schumii. Yeah, I will try to watch the GP3 race the next time when it’s on tv. I’m pretty sure that they broadcast it in New Zealand.

  3. DirtyNurbKing58

    Who thought that sitting in front of your TV can lead to this, but you have huge talent mate. I’m from Newport, so represent our area haha good luck mate! :)

  4. polpol3214

    He is very blessed… young age ..with that talent.. good luck
    And God bless… I wish to have that also. :)

    1. Louie_Schumii

      From a marketing perspective it’s also great since Gran Turismo is currently at it’s 6th iteration! Loving how most of the numbers on the GT Academy race cars almost luck into one that has a meaning or another to Nissan/PlayStation/GT Academy’s history. Then again a famous racing driver once said that numbers are nothing but data ;P

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