Race report
FIA F3 Spielberg II
Red Bull Ring F3: Vesti wins truncated feature race
Reigning Formula Regional European champion Frederik Vesti dominated the first FIA Formula 3 Championship race of the weekend, which was prematurely ended just after half distance.
Josh Suttill
Edited: Jul 11, 2020, 2:13 PM
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An increasingly wet Red Bull Ring meant the race was red-flagged and not restarted with 10 laps to go.
Danish ace Vesti maintained his race lead from his first F3 pole position on the opening lap, while Trident’s Lirim Zendeli had charged from sixth on the grid to second by Turn 1.
Zendeli pressured Prema’s Vesti on the run to Turn 3 on the first lap, but Vesti resisted and remained relatively unchallenged for the remainder of the race.
The first incident in the rain-soaked race came when Formula Renault Eurocup graduate Aleksandr Smolyar spun on the exit of the final lap and brought out the virtual safety car on the fourth lap of the race.
His ART Grand Prix-run car was recovered and the race resumed, only for a full safety car to be required three laps later when Carlin’s Clement Novalak picked up a rear-left puncture and was left facing backwards at the last corner.
Novalak was able to drive back to the pits and the race had two more laps of green flag running before the safety car was required once more.
Teenage Charouz signing Roman Stanek was beached in the gravel at the penultimate corner while ART’s Sebastian Fernandez was sent spinning into the barriers a few moments later after contact with Enaam Ahmed (Carlin).
The race was red-flagged while under this third safety car period due to the worsening weather conditions and the results were counted from the lap prior to half distance - having originally been taken from lap 12.
This meant series rookie Vesti earned his maiden FIA F3 victory and Zendeli claimed his first-ever podium in the series.
David Beckmann (Trident) took his first podium in the championship since it was rebranded from GP3, while Prema's Oscar Piastri claimed fourth place.
Beckmann's Trident teammate Caldwell passed last weekend's race one victor Piastri at the final restart to initially demote the 2019 Eurocup champion to fifth place.
However due to the red flag, the results were backdated to the lap prior to Caldwell's overtake, meaning he had to settle for fifth place.
MP Motorsport's Richard Verschoor was another to fall foul of this, as he was running in sixth place when the red flags came out, but dropped to seventh place in the final classification.
This promoted Prema driver Logan Sargeant into sixth place ahead of Verschoor and last Sunday's sprint race winner Liam Lawson (MP), who took eighth.
Reigning German Formula 4 champion Theo Pourchaire (ART) earned his first points in the series in ninth place with HWA's Jake Hughes claiming the final point and reverse-grid pole for tomorrow's race.
F3 Red Bull Ring - feature race results:
Cla # Driver Team Laps Gap 1 2 Frederik Vesti
Prema Powerteam 11 2 10
Lirim Zendeli
Trident 11 0.626 3 11
David Beckmann
Trident 11 0.918 4 1
Oscar Piastri
Prema Powerteam 11 1.698 5 12
Olli Caldwell
Trident 11 2.087 6 3
Logan Sargeant
Prema Powerteam 11 2.551 7 17
Richard Verschoor
MP Motorsport 11 2.999 8 5
Liam Lawson
HitechGP 11 3.406 9 7
Theo Pourchaire
ART Grand Prix 11 4.031 10 15
Jake Hughes
HWA AG 11 4.436 11 29
Alexander Peroni
Campos Racing 11 4.982 12 25
David Schumacher
Charouz Racing System 11 5.676 13 9
Sebastian Fernandez
ART Grand Prix 11 6.074 14 4
Max Fewtrell
HitechGP 11 6.366 15 14
Enzo Fittipaldi
HWA AG 11 6.771 16 19
Lukas Dunner
MP Motorsport 11 7.260 17 23
Roman Staněk
Charouz Racing System 11 7.876 18 6
Dennis Hauger
HitechGP 11 8.631 19 27
Enaam Ahmed
Carlin 11 9.319 20 18
Bent Viscaal
MP Motorsport 11 9.783 21 31
Sophia Flörsch
Campos Racing 11 10.731 22 16
Jack Doohan
HWA AG 11 11.186 23 22
Matteo Nannini
Jenzer Motorsport 11 11.815 24 28
Cameron Das
Carlin 11 13.078 25 20
Calan Williams
Jenzer Motorsport 11 13.531 26 24
Igor Fraga
Charouz Racing System 11 13.834 27 30
Alessio Deledda
Campos Racing 11 15.189 28 21
Federico Malvestiti
Jenzer Motorsport 11 15.687 29 26
Clement Novalak
Carlin 10 1 Lap 8
Alexander Smolyar
ART Grand Prix 3 8 Laps View full results
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