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Hitech TGR had another good season in 2024 finishing fifth in the Teams’ Championship, while Luke Browning led their charge in the Drivers’ title fight, ending up third.
They return in 2025 with Martinius Stenshorne and two new faces in Joshua Dufek and Gerrard Xie, so what can we expect from them this season?
Martinius Stenshorne will be hoping for a much improved second season after showing plenty of promise in his rookie campaign, which included a victory at the Melbourne Sprint Race.
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The Norwegian also finished second in the Spielberg Sprint but in 2025 he will want to make more of an impression in the Features Races.
His best result on Sunday came at the final round of the year in Monza when he finished fifth and after two post-season tests where he was a fixture near the front of the timesheets, he is carrying plenty of momentum into 2025.
Stenshorne will want to improve his Qualifying performances as only three times last year did he qualify in the top 12, the best coming in Barcelona where he was seventh.
On each of those weekends he scored points and almost made it a double in Barcelona before a late race collision in the Feature Race knocked him down the order having finished fourth in the Sprint.
If he can do that, he has shown he has the pace in race trim to be competitive, he just needs to have better starting positions.
Stenshorne will be hopeful of following the in the footsteps of former teammate Browning, who improved remarkably in the second season with Hitech and if he can, he could be a driver to be reckoned with in 2025.
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Stenshorne’s first new teammate Joshua Dufek is another second-year driver and while new to Hitech in F3, he previously raced for them in the 2022 Formula Regional Asian Championship.
Dufek comes into the year looking to build on a rookie campaign in which he showed good things but did not always feel the results reflected his potential.
His only points scored came at the final race of the year in Monza when he finished P10 in the Feature Race, but it could be argued that it should have come earlier in the season.
He showed flashes of potential throughout the year especially in Budapest when he set the pace in Qualifying for the first half of the session. He wound up in P6 only to be disqualified later for a technical infringement.
But the pace is there, and he showed that at post-season testing and with the hard work he is already putting in over the winter, he could be primed for a big year in his new surroundings.
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Gerrard Xie is the final member of the Hitech team in 2025, the lone rookie in this year’s lineup, but he did race for the team last season in the GB3 Championship.
He achieved three podiums, which includes one victory on his way to finishing seventh in the Drivers’ Standings.
The Chinese racer took a huge leap forward in 2024 compared to his rookie campaign which will give him a lot of confidence as he prepares for the next step in his single seater career.
Stepping up in a familiar environment will give him belief as will his previous title winning success in 2022, coming out on top in the Chinese Formula 4 Championship and the Formula Renault Super Challenge.
That same year he also finished second in the Macau Grand Prix after qualifying on pole.
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He also had four days of post-season testing with the team in Jerez and Barcelona, where he completed a lot of laps and would have been able to go into the winter with an understanding of F3 machinery, putting him in a good place for 2025.
There is also the added factor of a new Formula 3 car this year and Hitech are banking of familiarity to help them this year. But it is also a lineup that has potential to big things especially if they are able to hit the ground running in Melbourne.