Victorious Fairclough ends GB3 season in style at Monza
Round 8 - Monza - Report
Hitech TGR’s Deagen Fairclough closed out the season with a brilliant victory at Monza — his first win in GB3 machinery. The 19-year-old was triumphant on Sunday morning after an entertaining race featuring multiple overtaking moves and three Safety Cars. Deagen crossed the finish line with a margin of just 0.278 seconds after 12 dramatic laps.
Behind him, Hitech team-mate Keanu Al Azhari delivered one of the drives of the season, rising from 20th on the grid to finish fourth — an outstanding performance, which helped secure Hitech the Vice-Champion spot in the GB3 Teams’ Championship.
Deagen Fairclough:
“I’ve missed this feeling so much and to finally get a win at the end of the season is just mega. I’m really pleased. The support I’ve had from everyone at Hitech and ROKiT, I’m super, super pleased.”
“I’ve wanted to win all season and it’s definitely lifted a lot of weight off my shoulders. It was a tough race, with really good, hard racing and a lot of Safety Cars to contend with — but it’s all paid off, finally.”
After starting fourth, Deagen was involved in a first-corner incident in which all the top three cars ran wide through the first chicane. Once the field had sorted themselves out, Deagen was running second when the first Safety Car was deployed.
On the restart, the leader ran wide and Deagen stormed through into the lead, just as the Safety Car appeared for a second time. With a perfect restart out of the Parabolica, it looked as if the West Sussex racer was set to pull out a gap, but with the power of the slipstream, he was reeled back in and dropped to third.
A brilliant move around the outside at the Roggia chicane put Deagen back into P1, and he held on to take a memorable victory. Behind him, Keanu was picking off cars one at a time and, by steering clear of the trouble unfolding around him, came close to a podium after starting 20th, unfortunately due to a water leak which forced him to miss qualifying.
Keanu Al Azhari:
“I just had to put that issue to the back of my mind — it was out of my hands and also out of the team’s hands too; it’s just one of those things. Setbacks happen, but I’m appreciative of the Hitech team, and when you start at the back of the grid it gives you a bit of freedom — you keep an eye on the cars in front of you and stay out of trouble.”
“Congrats to Deagen for winning Race 2, but I really enjoyed myself in that one too. I took advantage of the situation, kept myself calm and collected, assessed what was going on around and ahead of me. I stayed out of trouble, picked off the moves one by one, including about eight places on lap one — tried to keep the rhythm going — and it definitely worked out very well.”
Deagen had started the weekend strongly and was running third on the opening lap of Race 1 on Saturday afternoon when a red flag brought proceedings to a halt. Despite dropping back to fifth after a Safety Car restart, Deagen made an excellent pass into the Roggia chicane to secure fourth. Further back, Keanu finished 12th after starting from the rear of the grid, while the Alpine Academy racer took 11th in Race 3.
In the final race of the season, Deagen made an incredible start and very nearly took his second win of the weekend. Starting ninth in the reverse grid race, he made up four places at the first corner, before picking off another two places — into Ascari and the Parabolica — to end the opening lap in third. By lap three, Deagen had sensationally taken the lead, but after running wide at Turn 1, dropped to second — a place he held to the flag, to give him third place in the Drivers’ standings.
