Formula 3 in Barcelona - A Review

After a busy weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain, racing concludes with two talented young drivers claiming victory in the Sprint and Feature races, Ivan Domingues of Van Amersfoort racing and Rafael Câmara of Trident.

(Image credits: Getty Images, Formula 1®)

Heading into the first and only practice session of the weekend, the main element the drivers and teams were focusing on was maximising their track time with different strategies, some teams chose to stay out for only 8 or 9 laps, while others ran for around 15 laps. Topping the timesheets was Rafael Câmara setting a lap time of 1:29.024 in his first lap of the day, Giusti followed second fastest, with home hero Boya taking third fastest. Wurz, Stenshorne, Tramnitz, Inthraphuvasak, Voisin, Ramos and Tsolov completed the top 10. 

Moving on to qualifying, the drivers aimed to set the fastest laps they could to put them high up on the grid. As the battle for fastest lap and track position continued the Trident teammates, Strømsted and Câmara, were at the front of the grid early on in the session. Track limits came into play a number of times throughout quali as drivers returned to the pitlane, seeing that some of the drivers lap times had been deleted for exceeding track limits. After 2 further runs during the session, F3 saw Câmara take his fourth pole of the season and take home another Aramco Pole Position Award. Tsolov and van Hoepen followed in second and third, Nael, Ramos, Giusti, Domingues, Strømsted, Taponen and Tramnitz all completed the top 10. Stenshorne finished 11th with Wharton taking 12th place, which gave him pole position for the reverse grid Sprint race.

After 21 laps in the Barcelona sun, Van Amersfoort racing driver Ivan Domingues claimed his first F3 victory in the sprint race, he also became the first Portuguese driver to win in the championship, VAR also took a double podium with Domingues’ teammate Santiago Ramos claiming second place. Tsolov claimed the final podium finish in third place, with van Hoepen in fourth, rounding out the top ten points finishers were Nael, Giusti, Boya, Wharton, Inthraphuvasak and León in 10th. AIX racing driver José Garfias ended up retiring from the race at lap 19 and leaving the Sprint with a DNF. Following the race, MP Motorsport driver Tim Tramnitz was given a 3 place grid penalty following a collision with Martinius Stenshorne at the start of the race. PREMA driver Ugo Ugochukwu was given a 10 second time penalty for gaining an advantage after leaving and rejoining the track, overtaking cars 10, 31, and 6 in the process.

Following on from his incredible start to the weekend, Trident driver Rafael Câmara claimed his 3rd race victory of the season during the feature race. Nael finished second for Van Amersfoort racing after a last lap overtake into T1, Giusti claimed his maiden F3 podium this weekend by finishing the feature race in 3rd. Van Hoepen finished 4th for ART, with Nikola Tsolov in 5th, Ivan Domingues in 6th, Tim Tramnitz in 7th. Noah Strømsted, Martinius Stenshorne and Callum Vosin all rounded out the points claiming 8th, 9th and 10th respectively, after James Wharton was knocked down the order as he received a time penalty for track limits. However following a 10 second stop-and-go penalty for multiple delta variations, Nicola Lacorte of Car 29 reached 14 penalty points (in a 12 month period) on his record, meaning he is now suspended from the next race in Spielberg. Roman Bilinski was also given a 10 second time penalty after causing a collision with Jose Garfias, however as he did not finish the race, his penalty is now converted into a 5 place grid drop which will be applied to the next race he participates in. Jesse Carrasquedo has also been given a post-race 10-second stop-and-go penalty for failing to start from the pitlane when out of position at the Safety Car Line 1, but because it was a post-race penalty is is now converted to a 30-second penalty dropping him from P22 to P25 in the final race classification. 

After this weekend in Barcelona the standings are as follows:

Drivers championship-

P1: Rafael Câmara, 105 points

P2: Nikola Tsolov, 79 points

P3: Tim Tramnitz, 70 points

Constructors championship-

P1: Trident, 176 points

P2: Campos Racing, 130 points

P3: MP Motorsport, 126 points

Next race:

The next Formula 3 race will take place in Spielberg, Austria at the Red Bull Ring, between 27th-29th June.

Article written by Charlotte Taylor