F3 is here and we have had our first race, sprint race took place today but lets look at how qualifying went yesterday that led to the reverse grid line up for the sprint race today.
Qualifying
New to Formula 3 constructor Van Amersfoort Racing saw a great start to their first season with driver Franco Colapinto taking pole position with a lap time of 1:46.246. However he wasn’t the fastest at first, Grégoire Saucy jumped to the top of the timesheet
Simialr to F2 qualifying when majority of the drivers are in the pits, 2 remained on track, ART Juan Manuel Correa and MP Motorsport Alexander Smolyar and that provided times for Correa climbing to third and Smolyar to be the fastest at the time.
With 10 minutes left all drivers on the track pushing to have a great final lap to secure their position for Sundays feature race and potentially depending on where finished the reversed grid for Saturday sprint race.
Colpinto was able to get the fastest time securing pole position, shortly behind him was Roman Stanek.
Official line up from qualifying is: with the top 12 flipping for Saturday race.
Sprint Race
Isack Hadjar takes his maiden win in formula 3 due to a time penalty issued to Prema Oliver Bearman whom finished first. He was given a 5 second post race penalty for violating track limits.
Bearman led majority of the race due to starting second because of reverse grid saw him easily get away from reverse pole sitter Zak O’Sullivan. Sunday Pole sitter Franco Colapinto collided with second position driver Roman Stanek at the start of the race unfortunately eliminating them from the race.
Arthur Leclerc proved his skill by being the driver with the biggest move in the race starting from 13th to finish in 5th.
For ART is proved to be a difficult race in which 2 of their drivers having to retire during the race Saucy and his teammate Victor Martins collided into turn 1 while battling for eighth place at the time.
On lap 10, Hadjar was running in third past Smolyar looking to overtake Zane Maloney the first driver from Barbados whom was running in third. Shortly after Zak O’Sullivan’s pace was dropping allowing Maloney and Hadjar to overtake seeing Hadjar then overtake Maloney to run in second position. While this was taking place Smolyar was able to past O’Sullivan and eventually Maloney for third on the final lap.
While Maloney lost his chance to stand on the podium he was the fastest in the sprint race which saw him receive an extra point thus equaling the amount of points given to third place driver Smolyar. As mentioned Leclerc finshed fifth, and pole sitter for tomorrow’s race O’Sullivan dropping to sixth, Collet finished seventh for MP Motorsport and American Kaylen Frederick was eighth. The only ART driver to finish the sprint race saw Correa finishing in ninth and Campos’ Vidales rounding out the top ten.
With an interesting sprint race no doubt we come tomorrow with an action packed feature race with more points on the line.
Who do you think will win? Any season predictions? Let us know in the comments!