Nocturne's Tom Stevens clinched his fourth Grand Prix United win in race 1 at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and strengthened his lead in the driver's championship. Guyon Branten (MODE Auto Concepts) was the star of race two by securing his first win of the season after a hard fought battle with Luke Maguire (THR).
In only his second Grand Prix United event, Luke Maguire (THR) secures his first pole position with a 1:35.324 and dominates the qualifying session from start to finish. Championship leader Tom Stevens, who secured pole position at the first two rounds of the season, is only 0.020 shy of pole position and has to settle for P2 this time around. STAX Racing's Daniel Brewer manages to put his car in a solid third place. Chris Butcher (THR) qualifies in fourth, followed by Lewis Bickers (STAX Racing) in fifth. The top ten would be completed by Moritz Kropp, Menno Klont, Sven Geelhoed, Guyon Branten and Loïc Meunier. Adrian Faber (Buttler-Pal Motorsport) is the fastest debutant in p14, 0.678 seconds off pole position.
Lights are out in a cloudy Barcelona and although Maguire does not initially have the best start, he moves over to the other side of the circuit to successfully defend his lead from Tom Stevens. The 29-car grid manages to go through turns 1, 2 and 3 unscathed, but disaster strikes in turn 4 as Team Yearone's Nikos Anastasopoulos misses his braking point and goes for a small trip through the gravel. Luckily, the Greek driver manages to continue without damage, but will have to fight himself back up the order to compensate for the time lost. As everyone gets settled into their position during the first lap of the race, a spin occurs in the midfield. Approaching turn 13, Adrian Faber (Buttler-Pal Motorsport) collides with the back of Stan Vlietstra (Scuderia Freccia Nera), which sends Vlietstra into a spin, the spinning car narrowly gets avoided by the Mode Auto Concept's of Guyon Branten and Kenneth Singleton. Up ahead, Luke Maguire is strongly attacked by Tom Stevens. The British driver tries to overtake the Irishman multiple times in the first five laps of the race, but does not manage to get past just yet. This also gives the two cars behind the opportunity to close the gap to the front of the field. Daniel Brewer (STAX Racing) finds himself in fourth place, and continues to put pressure on Chris Butcher (THR). Entering lap six, he goes for the overtake and now finds himself back in third place, where he originally started the race from. Further back a train starts to form. Moritz Kropp, Lewis Bickers, Loïc Meunier, Menno Klont and Sven Geelhoed now find themselves in a five-way fight for a potential fifth place. Kropp and Bickers swap positions twice, and Klont is under immense pressure by Geelhoed, but everything remains clean and no big mistakes are made by any of the drivers.
Entering lap 8, Tom Stevens finally makes a move stick on Luke Maguire and takes the lead of the race, after Maguire seemingly started to struggle with his pace. Two laps later, Brewer also follows him to demote Maguire back to P3 and after a long fought battle, Chris Butcher overtakes Maguire too in the last lap of the race. Further back, Peter Vagapov (Valle Esports) overtakes Guyon Branten (MODE Auto Concepts) and Gijs Sonneveld (Gallery82 Motorsport) to work his way up to tenth place, which secures him the last points-scoring position of the race. Unfortunately, with a few corners to go, Gijs Sonneveld - who had been running in a solid 10th place all race up until the overtake by Vagapov - spins his car on the AstroTurf and collects Guyon Branten in the process. Buttler-Pal Motorsport's Adrian Faber sees the incident unfold and manages to easily pass the two colliding drivers to secure 11th place before the two manage to continue, which also hands him second place on the starting grid of race two. With Stevens winning his fourth Grand Prix United race and his second of the season, he manages to extend his lead in the driver's championship. Daniel Brewer finishes in second place, with Chris Butcher in third, Luke Maguire in fourth and Lewis Bickers in fifth. The top ten would be completed by Loïc Meunier, Sven Geelhoed, Moritz Kropp, Menno Klont and Peter Vagapov.
After starting 17th in race 1 due to a 10-place grid penalty, Guyon Branten (MODE Auto Concepts) managed to work his way up to 12th place and thus secures reverse grid pole for race two of the evening. With a pointless season so far for MODE Auto Concepts, huge pressure lays on the Dutchman's shoulders to take home some much needed points for the German-based outfit. Adrian Faber starts in P2 for Buttler-Pal Motorsport and Peter Vagapov starts in P3 for Valle Esports, with Menno Klont (Buttler-Pal Motorsport) in fourth and Moritz Kropp (Nocturne) in fifth. Branten has a great launch off the line and is the first to reach turn 1. Peter Vagapov has a better start than Adrian Faber and immediately puts pressure on the Polish driver into turn 1, with the two even banging wheels going into turn 2, before Vagapov has to back off to continue his chase for second place. 2020 European F3 champion Menno Klont temporarily loses his fourth place to Moritz Kropp, before regaining the position in turn 3. Further back Alex Lehoux (Team Iris) spins into the gravel trap of turn 3 after a collision with Valle Esports' Massimiliano Ribolli, and approaching turn 5, Dean Vella (GT Omega RPM Esports) and debutant Teun Sonneveld (Beyond Esports) also collide with a trip to the gravel trap as a result. Luckily, everyone is able to continue the race without major damage.
Up front, Branten manages to build a solid 2.6 seconds gap to Adrian Faber in second place, who is now under heavy pressure of Peter Vagapov. Going into turn 1 in lap 2 of the race, Vagapov dives to the inside of the Buttler-Pal Motorsport and a collision ensues. Both drivers have to bunny hop over the sausage kerbs and will rejoin outside of the top 5, with Vagapov later receiving a 5-second time penalty for his move on Faber. This gifts Menno Klont second place, with Kropp in third, Maguire in fourth and Geelhoed in fifth. But unfortunately, by the end of lap two, Moritz Kropp spins in the chicane and loses multiple positions. He rejoins in 14th place, and gets put under heavy pressure on the start-finish straight by Massimiliano Ribolli (Valle Esports), who shortly has to go through the grass during an attempted overtake on the German driver. Unfortunately, chaos ensues again for Kropp as he collides with Ribolli in turn 1 (while also driving past Adrian Faber, who had spun moments before) and loses even more positions.
Further ahead Guyon Branten has managed to create a 5-second lead to Menno Klont, who is now under heavy attack by Luke Maguire. In lap 3, Maguire makes the move stick, and will now try to close the gap to the lead of the race. However, Klont attempts to retake second place multiple times, which costs Maguire valuable time to the car ahead, but he manages to defend himself well from the Buttler-Pal Motorsport driver and will now move on to build a gap to third place.
Klont's defensive masterclass continues for four more laps, as he manages to defend his third place against a train of ten attacking cars behind. However, a podium place wasn't meant to be for the former champion, as Sven Geelhoed (Mazumder Motorsports) and Lewis Bickers (STAX Racing) successfully pass him in lap 6 of the race.
At the front, Luke Maguire is slowly catching Guyon Branten and has reduced the gap to to 3.5 seconds by lap 8 of the race. After putting in fast laps in the early stages of the race, the leading MODE Auto Concepts driver has surely worn too much of his tires and cannot keep up with the pace of the fast Irishman behind, who has already gained 7 places up to this point.
In lap 12 of the race, the gap from Branten to Maguire is now less than a second, and this brings the THR driver within striking distance. Sven Geelhoed, who now has free air in third place, is lapping at a faster pace than the cars ahead, but has to close a three-second gap to Maguire in second place in order to have a chance at the win.
A battle unfolds between Branten and Maguire, with Maguire trying to attack Branten into turn 1, but Branten holds on to win his first race of the season. This also hands MODE Auto Concepts their first points of the season. After an impressive drive, Luke Maguire (THR) secures second, with Sven Geelhoed (Mazumder Motorsport) eventually closing the gap to the cars ahead to finish third. Lewis Bickers (STAX Racing) finishes in fourth place with Chris Butcher (THR) in fifth. The top ten would be completed by Menno Klont, Daniel Brewer, Tom Stevens, Loïc Meunier and Peter Vagapov.
Tom Stevens extends his lead in the championship with a win in race one and an eight-place in race two, and he now has a 16-point advantage over Chris Butcher in second. Daniel Brewer is third in the driver's standings for STAX Racing, 23 points behind Stevens. In the team standings, Nocturne still leads with 127 points, but THR and STAX Racing have closed the gap significantly and now have 118 and 114 points respectively. The next event will be at Mugello on the 17th of January.