British teenager Tom Lebbon will remain with Elite Motorsport for the 2022 GB3 Championship partnered by the BRDC season, with the 16 year-old eyeing a title challenge in his second season with the team.
The 2020 Ginetta Junior Champion placed ninth in this year’s GB3 standings, achieving 18 top-10 finishes in his maiden GB3 campaign, including a podium at Donington Park in July.
After five years in karts, Tom switched to car racing with Elite in 2020 and achieved an incredible 15 overall Ginetta Junior podium finishes from 21 starts, including five outright race wins and 13 Rookie Class wins.
In his first season of single-seaters this year, Tom qualified inside the top-10 at every event, with two second row starts at Snetterton (the fifth-best qualifying average in this year’s field). He displayed great consistency too, registering nine top-six race finishes and retiring just once from the 24 races.
Elite Motorsport plans to run three of the new Tatuus cars in 2022, which will feature a raft of major upgrades to enhance both performance and safety.
Tom Lebbon said: “My aim for next year is to challenge for the overall championship. It would be great to be a consistent contender for podiums and race wins as we showed good pace this year. I’m staying with Elite for 2022 as I’ve developed a strong bond with the team and believe they have the potential to go forward.
“The 2022 car looks great and I’m sure it will also be cool to race with the added downforce, power and halo. I came into GB3 this year from Ginettas and the championship was just as hard as I thought it would be but I learnt so much.
“I showed strong pace at many tracks throughout the season but the high point this year was claiming a podium at Donington. It has been a pleasure to race for Elite again this year and can’t wait for the 2022 season to start. I must thank my partners wefinanceanycar.com, TMJ Interiors, Credo Asset Finance, Movac Group Limited and Octane Finance, my parents and everyone at Elite.”
Eddie Ives, Elite Motorsport Team Owner and Manager said: “I am very, very excited to be continuing through to the planned second half of a year two programme with Tom.
“Because of his phenomenal season in Ginettas last year, it’s easy to forget that 2021 was only Tom’s second year out of karts and his first year in single-seaters. Moving up from Ginetta Juniors into a GB3 car was a big step, as it was for us, but we all learnt a lot.
“I’m really looking forward to getting our hands on the new ’22 car and turning it into a front running package.”