The former British F4 champion Matthew Rees will stay at JHR Developments for his second season in GB3.

The British driver drove brilliantly last year finishing sixth in the championship and took his first GB3 victory at Brands Hatch. 

The 17-year-old is highly ambitious heading into the 2023 and said he is looking to put together a championship challenge.

Rees said: “My aspiration for 2023 is to be consistently in the top three and challenge for the title.”

The JHR driver warned that expectations will be higher than a year ago but Rees is anticipating a competitive start to the season.

“We will have a lot more expectation than last year, so we need to live up to that. However, we have the experience of knowing the car and how it handles in a race and working with the engineers to develop the things that we like, so we should have a strong start to the year.”

GB3 will visit a trio a Formula 1 circuits in Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps and a first-ever trip to Zandvoort in the Netherlands. Rees is eagerly anticipating those tracks in particular.

“Looking at the calendar, Zandvoort will be interesting. It means we have three F1 venues on the calendar, so it’s quite nice to be racing on those circuits and getting experience, because as we move on up the ladder we can use that experience to our advantage.”

JHR Developments Team Principal Steven Hunter is delighted to have the 2021 British F4 champion back with JHR.

Hunter added: “We’re very happy to have Matthew back with the team for the third-straight season. 

“We’ve known about his skill and talent from as far back as 2020, when he started testing with us in F4 machinery, and of course we had that incredible season in the F4 British Championship, winning the Drivers’, Rookie, and Teams’ Championship titles with him.

“Last year in the GB3 Championship he showed his ability again, claiming an opening weekend podium and adding double pole position and our maiden series victory at Brands Hatch.”

The JHR team boss said the outfit will be adding two cars this season and will have three cars to gather data from which has brought a feeling of confidence to the Derbyshire-based team.

“With three drivers in the team this year we’ll have triple the data to work with and that means we’re feeling confident about how we will do, though of course we’ll keep working hard every weekend to achieve our goals together.”

Image: Jakob Ebrey Photography