Academy Report: Battling the British summer

The European triple-header is complete, and for a trio of our young starlets in the Williams Racing Driver Academy, Silverstone was the conclusion of a busy three weekends.

Franco Colapinto, Zak O'Sullivan, and Luke Browning have accompanied us to Spain, Austria, and now Great Britain.

We saw more laps led, another pole position, and, of course, a maiden FP1 from our Academy at Silverstone.

Read on to see how they fared, plus Lia Block's latest single-seater round at Paul Ricard.

Dreams came true for Franco on Friday when he jumped in Logan's FW46 for the first time and took part in a Formula 1 FP1 session.

We got the impression our Argentine racer would be content if the weekend stopped there, but he professionally kept his head down and drove another strong F2 weekend.

His P4 qualification had him in the mix for both races. He mastered the wet conditions on Saturday to survive three restarts and finished P5 in the Sprint Race after making a last-lap overtake.

More points followed on Sunday in the Feature Race, where Franco's alternate strategy gamble secured him a P4 finish, and he now sits P5 in the championship.

The tight margins in the second tier had Zak qualifying in P14 but only two-tenths from the reverse grid pole.

He spent Saturday's Sprint Race making up positions between the Safety Car and VSC slowdowns, deftly passing two drivers in the final sector on a single lap.

Contact with his teammate as he reached the top 10 positions sadly resulted in a retirement, nullifying all his progress.

The British teenager followed Franco with the alternative strategy in the Feature Race, and he finished in P11, just shy of the points.

A second pole position in a row for Luke meant he'd start the Feature Race from Silverstone's best seat.

However, it was far from an easy weekend, with rain severely affecting both F3 races, including postponing Saturday morning's Sprint Race until after F1 Qualifying.

Tim Tramnitz hit him once the racing finally got underway, giving Luke a puncture at The Loop and sending him one lap down once he had pitted, effectively ending his race.

The Feature Race was better, with Luke leading the way on wet tyres while the weather couldn't decide what it wanted to do.

With pit stops uncommon in F3, Luke, like many others, remained on the wets as the track dried and eventually fell to P8, still salvaging some points for his title fight.

Single-seater action continued for Lia as she joined the Spanish F4 championship for another weekend, this time at France's Circuit Paul Ricard.

Our F1 Academy representative clocked up more competitive mileage, with the series running three races and Lia finishing all the laps in each.

Race 1 was the most impressive, though, where the 17-year-old American advanced from a P32 start to a P17 classification.

P23 and P27 in the weekend's other races represented further position gains, too, as Lia gets more experience ahead of F1 Academy's fourth round at Zandvoort next month.

Our Formula 2 and Formula 3 hopefuls now earn a well-deserved weekend off before tackling Hungary and Belgium.

Alessandro Giusti will represent the Williams Racing Driver Academy in single-seaters next weekend when FRECA heads to Mugello.