The Stakes
A sun-drenched Barcelona hosted this season’s first wheel-to-wheel action with 30 cars battling it out on track, but it was PREMA Racing who reigned in Spain. Trident’s Pedro Piquet had set the benchmark during Free Practice but, led by Robert Shwartzman, three of the top four places in Qualifying were occupied by PREMA machines. ART Grand Prix’s Christian Lundgaard split the pack on the front row. The Danish driver then took the lead into Turn 1 and didn’t look back, only to be demoted to second place after being given a late five-second penalty. Therefore it was Shwartzman who made history as F3’s first race winner after a solid drive. Nobody could catch teammate Jehan Daruvala in Race 2, as the Italian team took 81 points to cap off a very impressive weekend.
Shwartzman (37 pts) leads Lundgaard (24 pts) at the top of the standings, with Daruvala (23 pts) just a point further behind in third; PREMA Racing are the early front-runners in the Teams’ Championship with 81 points, 32 ahead of ART Grand Prix (49 pts) in second, with Hitech Grand Prix in third with 20 points.
Circuit Paul Ricard plays host to F3 for the second round of the championship, and the drivers will be hoping to avoid the colourful run-off areas as they fight hard to make their mark on the young season. Pirelli are supplying teams with Medium compound tyres, and the number of cars battling it out on track this weekend is set to provide plenty of entertainment.
Warm Up – Jake Hughes with HWA RaceLab
“The Circuit Paul Ricard is a very fast, very demanding track. It’s quite hard on the front tyres, especially the front left, and it’s quite physical for the driver as well because Le Beausset is one of the most demanding corners in the world in my opinion. With the natural slipstream all the way through Signes and into Le Beausset, there’s a lot of side-by-side action. It’s such a long, fast corner with a wide apex you leave a big gap on the inside, so if someone’s feeling brave you can push it up the inside there.
“We had a test there last year at a similar time to the one we had this year and the track conditions were very different from the test to the race, so I would expect something similar. We’ve already seen more degradation than last year’s test and with the added temperature of the summer in the south of France, this will become more critical.
“It’s historically a test circuit that has been transformed into a race circuit, so a lot of the curbs are different to what we’re used to. There’s a lot of long straights, which I think makes the racing quite interesting and quite tense. I really enjoyed it last year.
“It’s quite susceptible to wind direction being on top of a mountain range too, so the weather can be quite interesting as well. We had some good races last year in GP3 so I’m looking forward to it.”
Noteworthy
> PREMA Racing teammates Robert Shwartzman and Jehan Daruvala made history in Barcelona after winning Race 1 and Race 2 respectively – the first races of the inaugural FIA Formula 3 Championship.
> PREMA and ART Grand Prix were the only teams to see all three of their drivers score points in both races.
> 10 different drivers scored points in Round 1 – Shwartzman, Daruvala and Marcus Armstrong of PREMA, ART’s Christian Lundgaard, David Beckmann and Max Fewtrell, Jüri Vips of Hitech Grand Prix, Niko Kari from Trident, MP Motorsport’s Simo Laaksonen and Jenzer Motorsport’s Yuki Tsunoda.
> Just 23 points separate Shwartzman at the top of the Driver’s Championship and Beckmann in seventh.
> 29 drivers will compete the second round at Circuit Paul Ricard with Jenzer Motorsport only running two cars in France.
> Lundgaard was the fastest overall driver around Circuit Paul Ricard during the F3 testing event at Le Castellet in March, with a time of 1:48.786.s