The Prema team continued his dominance in the Zandvoort FIA European Formula 3 Championship round as Ralf Aron made it two wins in a row leading Marcus Armstrong and Guanyu Zhou.
The Estonian had a repeat of Race 1 when he took on pole-sitter Motopark’s Dan Ticktum into Turn 1 at the start of Race 2 at Zandvoort. He made it stick again to take over the lead from Ticktum but at the cost of losing Mick Schumacher.
Aron was on the inside in Turn 1 with Ticktum in the middle and Schumacher on the outside. A little nudge from Aron passed on to Ticktum touching the German which eventually forced him onto the gravel to retire.
Behind, Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala spun into Turn 1 from 12th collecting HitechGP’s Enaam Ahmed in the process. While Ahmed was forced to retire, Daruvala managed to continue minus the front wing for which he had pit – putting him one lap down on the leaders.
At the same time, Carlin’s Ameya Vaidyanathan crashed into the wall at Turn 5 while battling with HitechGP’s Ben Hingeley – the collision will be investigated by the stewards after the race.
Meanwhile, the safety car was deployed to clear the cars but Aron remained unfazed on re-start and the rest of race as well to make it a double on Saturday in a fine show by the experienced F3 campaigner.
The battle for second then heated up as Ticktum couldn’t keep Armstrong behind for long with the Kiwi clearing him at Turn 1 and was followed by teammate Zhou who demoted the Red Bull junior to third as a result.
Armstrong took second but had fellow Ferrari junior right behind him on the line – the podium allowing the Kiwi to keep the championship lead. Ticktum though continued to loses places as HitechGP’s Alex Palou made it through as well.
The Red Bull junior had a lock-up in the final corner which allowed Palou to sneak through and he brought Carlin’s Ferdinand Habsburg as well, who made the move stick at Turn 1 – Palou finished fourth with Habsburg in fifth.
Ticktum eventually finished sixth with Prema’s Robert Shwartzman in seventh. Motopark’s Juri Vips had it hard with teammate Fabio Scherer only 0.356s behind him as Marino Sato completed the Top 10.
Outside the points scoring positions, Motopark’s Jonathan Aberdein managed to hold off a faster Carlin’s Sacha Fenestraz for 11th after the Renault junior cleared teammate Nikita Troitskiy and Motopark’s Sebastian Fernandez.
Positions 11-29: Aberdein, Fenestraz, Troistkiy, Fernandez, Artem Petrov, Julian Hanses, Sophia Floersch, Keyvan Andres and Petru Florescu. DNF: Daruvala, Vaidyanathan, Hingeley, Ahmed and Schumacher.
UPDATE: Following the race, Ahmed was handed three-place penalty for Race 3 after he was found to be guilty of spinning Daruvala in Turn 1. He also gets a one penalty point on his superlicense.
