Pulling Becomes First Woman to Win GB3 Race
- therookiereporters
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Starting from pole position, Pulling made history twice this weekend, becoming the first woman to qualify on pole and achieve a race win in the GB3 Championship.
Qualifying for the GB3 Championship at Spa-Francorchamps saw Rodin Motorsport’s - Abbi Pulling put her car at the top of the timesheet with a lap time of 2:12.566. Her teammate Maxim Rehm missed out on pole by 0.020s but still started at the front of the grid alongside Nikita Bedrin, Martin Molnar and Deagan Fairclough, this set the starting order for Race 1. This qualifying session saw 6 drivers get a lap time deleted as a result of exceeding track limits, those being - Maxim Rehm, Dante Vinci, Kirill Kutskov, Nikita Bedrin, Patricio Gonzalez and Jack Taylor.
Race 1 was postponed following poor weather conditions at Circuit de Spa Francorchamps and it was decided that the GB3 Championship will only take part in two races, where Race 1 took the place of Race 2 and the second race will take place of the ‘third race’ on Sunday. For this race, the qualifying order remained the same seeing Pulling start on pole.
Twenty-two cars got ready for the race start, the lights seeing Pulling lead into the first corner. Bedrin made his way up into second and Rehm saw a lockup. Towards the end of the first lap Fairclough made his way to the pitlane following front wing damage. The beginning of the second lap saw an incident between Xcel Motorsport’s Rowan Campbell-Pilling and Patricio Gonzalez which saw an unfortunate end to Gonzalez's race. A safety car was deployed for the cars of Campbell-Pilling and Gonzalez who remained stationary. Hillspeed’s Peter Bouzinelos went off at Le Combes, the safety car remaining deployed until the car was moved from the gravel trap.
With the safety car coming in with 5 laps left, the restart was crucial for the front runners. Abbi Pulling managed a great restart, keeping the lead with her Rodin teammate - Maxim Rehm behind.
On Lap 7, the cars of Jason Pribyl, Kyuho Lee and Leon Wilson went into the pits following an incident, Wilson managed to get back to the track, but it was Lee and Pribyl that were classified as retirements.
Past the chequered flag we went and it was Pulling who led the race from the start, converting that pole position into a victory, making history becoming the first woman to win a GB3 race! Nikita Bedrin was just unable to catch up but still managed to finish on the podium for the third time in his 2026 campaign and finishing behind him to complete the podium places was Rehm originally also finished on the podium however, following talks with race control Maxim Rehm had picked up a penalty so Martin Molnar was promoted to the podium places.
Jon Jackson spoke with the podium finishers after the race starting with Abbi Pulling.
JJ - “Abbi Pulling, GB3 race winner, how do you feel?”
AP - “Bloody good! I had to work for it and there were sore points I had at Silverstone - my race starts and now I’ve absolutely nailed it. I can’t thank the team enough and everyone around me. I’ve got so many people around me. It’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow so this is his birthday gift.”
Jackson also spoke to Bedrin after the race.
JJ - “Great race there, couldn’t quite get Abbi in the end though.”
NB - “Yeah, I was missing one lap I think, one more lap and we would have got ahead of her but I think we had positive pace all week and even in the race now after a few laps when we all settled down we were really fast, so a bit unfortunate we couldn’t catch up in the end but P2 is a good finish for sure.”
Article written by Ria Wiktor ©️ Ria Wiktor 2026
