Gloucestershire’s Zak O’Sullivan extended his lead of the British F3 Championship to nearly 50 points after two victories at Donington Park at the weekend.

The 16-year-old Carlin driver took pole position for both of the opening races, before making a perfect start on both occasions and leading every lap to the chequered flag.

The only downside to his weekend was a crash with title rival Reece Ushijima (Hitech) in the reverse grid finale, which saw Ushijima hit with a five-place grid penalty for the next race meeting.

O’Sullivan left Donington with a 47-point advantage in the standings.

Qualifying was a sign of things to come with the BRDC SuperStars member lapping more than 0.3 seconds faster than Ushijima to take pole for race one, with his second-fastest lap just under 0.3 seconds faster than Alex Connor (Arden) to give him pole for the second race.

O’Sullivan was never troubled in the opener, pulling away from Ushijima to finish nearly five seconds ahead at the flag and taking fastest lap into the bargain.

Race two again saw O’Sullivan make the perfect getaway, but a lock-up early on allowed Connor to close up to his tail. However, Connor had his mirrors full of the duelling Hitech pair of Ushijima and Bart Horsten, allowing O’Sullivan to eke out a gap of just over a second at the flag.

The usual chaos of the reverse-grid finale saw O’Sullivan and Ushijima battling towards the tail of the field and when the #51 Carlin got alongside Ushijima on the run to the Melbourne hairpin, the Hitech moved across and the ensuing contact put both cars out of the race.

Despite the final race setback, O’Sullivan, from Withington, near Cirencester, was delighted with his weekend’s work.

He said: “It was the first weekend where we’ve been on the pace of the front runners from the start and were even a bit quicker than them, which was a positive step.”

Next up is the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, the F3 championship’s one overseas meeting of the year.