The final race of the 2025 Zandvoort GB3 weekend brought both chaos and celebration as Hugo Schwarze steered to his maiden single-seater win in the top-12 reverse grid contest. Starting from fourth, the VRD Racing driver survived two lengthy safety car periods and made a decisive move on Will Macintyre early on, before holding his nerve across the closing laps to secure victory.
The grid reversal placed Kai Daryanani on pole for JHR Developments, but the Indian driver was immediately under pressure. Schwarze launched strongly, passing both Daryanani and Hitech’s Keanu Al Azhari on lap one to move into second, chasing down front-row starter Macintyre. On the second tour, Schwarze seized his opportunity, slipping past Macintyre into turn three and quickly edging clear.
Safety Cars shape the contest
The German’s progress was interrupted twice. The first neutralisation came when Elite’s Flynn Jackes spun into the gravel at turn one. After racing resumed, further drama struck as Rodin’s Gianmarco Pradel tangled with Daryanani at turn three, triggering a chain reaction that also eliminated Argenti with Prema’s Yuanpu Cui. With three cars stranded against the barriers, the safety car was required for several laps.
That left just two green-flag laps to settle the race, but Schwarze kept his composure. With Macintyre shadowing him to the flag, the VRD driver held on to win by a third of a second and record his first GB3 triumph.
Schwarze savours breakthrough win
For Schwarze, the victory represented a dream realised, and his post-race comments reflected both joy and the surreal nature of his weekend plans.
“It feels awesome. When I joined this weekend I thought maybe we could aim for the top-10, but winning the final race is obviously a dream come true. I have to fly back to England tonight to do a maths exam tomorrow morning! Some celebrations will happen, but there’ll be a bit of revision too tonight! There was a small twitch from Will going into turn three and I just took advantage of that. I had a moment myself but came out of it on top.”
Macintyre settles for second
For Will Macintyre, second place marked another strong showing in a reverse grid race, though he admitted disappointment at missing out on victory. The Elite Motorsport driver pointed to an early error that cost him the chance to fight Schwarze more closely.
“Unfortunately I made a mistake at turn three when readjusting to the car. After a few safety cars I got used to it all and had alright pace towards the end. It’s not been the best of weekends for us, another event where we’ve had no qualifying pace and some bad results. We need to sort it out but hopefully we’ll be up there at Spa. We’re going to be focusing on quali before Spa, because it’s been another bad qualifying like at round one. If we can sort that out, we’ll be up there.”
Al Azhari earns first GB3 podium
Completing the podium was Keanu Al Azhari, who delivered a strong drive for Hitech TGR to take third. After being denied a podium at Silverstone by a post-race penalty, the Alpine Academy junior finally got his reward in Zandvoort’s finale.
“The post race penalty at Silverstone didn’t really make my day too happy but I’m glad to get another podium in the bag here in race three. I had a really good launch, a great getaway. If I’d had a clear run I could have slotted into P1 I think, but I really just ran out of space and didn’t want to take too many risks into turn one, so I dropped down to P4 when I should easily have put my nose in for P1.”
“I dropped down to P4 but then I had solid pace over the two laps that we had and managed to slot by Daryanani at turn four. It was a really nice move, I hope they showed it! But from then on it was a bunch of safety cars which was unfortunate. Our tyre management has been really good this weekend and the team has been doing a great job. A nice step forward from Silverstone, but we didn’t get chance to show that this time.”
“I think we need a bit more luck in qualifying, obviously qualifying is very important here at Zandvoort and it’s hard to overtake. So we need to get everything together in Q1 and Q2, and from then on it should be very easy. We know we have the pace, just haven’t been able to show that in race one or two to get podiums in those yet.”
Classification: Zandvoort: Race 3
- Hugo Schwarze – VRD Racing
- Will Macintyre – Elite Motorsport
- Keanu Al Azhari – Hitech TGR
- Deagen Fairclough – Hitech TGR
- Noah Lisle – JHR Developments
- Nikita Johnson – Hitech TGR
- Patrick Heuzenroeder – Xcel Motorsport
- Reza Seewooruthun – Argenti with Prema
- Alex Ninovic – Rodin Motorsport
- Jack Sherwood – Xcel Motorsport
- Abbi Pulling – Rodin Motorsport
- Lucas Fluxa – Argenti with Prema
- Bianca Bustamante – Elite Motorsport
- Divy Nandan – JHR Developments
DNF. Stefan Bostandjiev – Fortec Motorsports
DNF. Kai Daryanani – JHR Developments
DNF. Gianmarco Pradel – Rodin Motorsport
DNF. Yuanpu Cui – Argenti with Prema
DNF. Flynn Jackes – Elite Motorsport
Schwarze’s victory capped a weekend of variety at the sharp end, with three different winners across three races in Zandvoort. As the GB3 Championship prepares to move on to Spa-Francorchamps, the battle at the top of the standings looks wide open, with multiple drivers and teams carrying momentum into Belgium.
