The Bulgarian claimed his 3rd win in Formula 3, his first in a Feature race

Finlay McSporran
Published: 18:26, 21st July 2024

This comes as our championship contenders continued to struggle this weekend as we approach the business end of the season

Race Report

Pole-sitter Van Hoepen had a slow start, having to defend from his teammate Tsolov as they approached the first corner, with the Bulgarian slotting into 1st as Van Hoepen ran wide into turn 1.

With his teammate now in first, Van Hoepen was struggling on his tyres in the dirty air of Tsolov as he came on the radio to ask the team to let him by so that he could drive in clean air.

But the pace of Tsolov was proving to be too much for him, forcing him to settle for second as the race approached the halfway point.

By this point there had been little movement in terms of the driver order with most of the grid stuck in a DRS train lead by Callum Voisin, the British driver sitting in P7 some 15 seconds back from he next car of Santiago Ramos. This meant that most of the championship contenders were still out of the points apart from Beganovic who was in 10th and Fornaroli in 4th.

The Safety car was deployed on lap 21 following a crash between Zagazeta and Lindblad. The crash happened when Zagazeta snuck a wheel down the inside of the Lindblad’s car, the Redbull junior unaware of Zagazeta’s Jenzer as he moved to the inside as they approached turn 4, making contact with the Jenzer car and taking both of them out of the race, concluding a miserable weekend for Lindblad after winning both races last time out at Silverstone.

The safety car would last for the remainder of the race, allowing Nikola Tsolov to cruise home for a 3rd F3 win in 2024, leading home an ART 1-2 with Van Hoepen crossing the line in second ahead of Noel Leon in 3rd, Fornaroli in 4th and Christian Mansell making it 3 ART’s in the top 5.

Unfortunately for them, Van Hoepen’s car was determined to be under the minimum weight following post race inspections, meaning that he has been disqualified from the feature race, promoting championship contender Fornaroli to the podium.

Championship Outlook

With his P3 in the feature race Leonardo Fornaroli moves himself into third in the drivers standings behind Lindblad and championship leader Mini who still leads despite not scoring any points over the weekend. P4 for Christian Mansell sees him move up to 5th in the standings, 22 points behind Mini as we head into the final 2 rounds with the championship still wide open.

As for the teams championship, Prema continue to dominate despite their difficult weekend while ART extend their advantage over Trident for second with 241 points compared to Trident’s 178.

Feature race classification (subject to change)

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Nikola Tsolov	ART Grand Prix	38m54.231s
2	Noel Leon	Van Amersfoort Racing	+1.114s
3	Leonardo Fornaroli	Trident	+1.439s
4	Christian Mansell	ART Grand Prix	+1.781s
5	Santiago Ramos	Trident	+2.091s
6	Callum Voisin	Rodin Motorsport	+2.497s
7	Nikita Bedrin	AIX Racing	+2.751s
8	Oliver Goethe	Campos Racing	+3.304s
19	Dino Beganovic	Prema	+4.008s
10	Mari Boya	Campos Racing	+4.443s
11	Gabriele Mini	Prema	+5.040s
12	Luke Browning	Hitech GP	+5.139s
13	Martinius Stenshorne	Hitech GP	+5.786s
14	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak	AIX Racing	+6.785s
15	Max Esterson	Jenzer Motorsport	+7.190s
16	Alex Dunne	MP Motorsport	+7.748s
17	Cian Shields	Hitech GP	+8.206s
18	Kacper Sztuka	MP Motorsport	+9.211s
19	Sebastian Montoya	Campos Racing	+9.453s
20	Tim Tramnitz	MP Motorsport	+9.850s
21	Piotr Wisnicki	Rodin Motorsport	+10.377s
22	Joshua Dufek	AIX Racing	+11.456s
23	Sophia Floersch	Van Amersfoort Racing	+11.792s
24	Tommy Smith	Van Amersfoort Racing	+16.104s
25	Sami Meguetounif	Trident	+38.783s
26	Joseph Loake	Rodin Motorsport	+1 lap
27	Matias Zagazeta	Jenzer Motorsport	+3 laps
28	Arvid Lindblad	Prema	+3 laps
Ret	Charlie Wurz	Jenzer Motorsport
DSQ	Lawrence Van Hoepen	ART

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