Zak O’Sullivan took delayed and truncated sprint F2 race win in a wet Belgium, as Dino Beganovic took top honours in F3.
F2:
O’Sullivan retained the lead into Turn 1 ahead of Hauger with Verschoor filtering into line in third. Into Les Combes and Zane Maloney was able to dive down the outside of Franco Colapinto to secure fourth. To cap off a first lap in which he gained six places, Oliver Bearman rounded Championship leader Isack Hadjar at the penultimate corner to move himself up to eighth.
At the start of Lap 2, Jak Crawford gained fifth from Colapinto on the run to Eau Rouge, leaving the MP Motorsport driver to defend from Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Onto Lap 3, the PREMA Racing driver was bold and went side-by-side into Eau Rouge to take sixth from the MP driver, with teammate Bearman following through down the Kemmel Straight.
The Safety Car was then deployed with Josep María Martí coming to a halt in his Campos Racing car. By the time the Campos was cleared, rain had intensified, and the race was Red Flagged on Lap 7. With the race not reaching 50% it meant that only the top five scored points, with O’Sullivan victorious ahead of Hauger and Verschoor. Maloney and Crawford rounded out the points scorers in fourth and fifth respectively.
Result: https://x.com/MsportXtra/status/1817244836333772982
F3:
It was an all-PREMA front row with Beganovic on pole, though it was teammate Minì who made the better start to take the lead into Turn 1. Just behind them, Tim Tramnitz had gotten ahead of Santiago Ramos for P3, while Arvid Lindblad made a fast start from P27 and was already up to 16th by the end of Lap 1.
But a Safety Car was required with Jenzer Motorsport’s Max Esterson having slowly spun into the barrier at Eau Rouge. The American driver was okay, and we returned to racing at the end of Lap 3. The battles were well and truly on as Beganovic got ahead of Minì at the end of the Kemmel Straight just after the restart, while León took back the P5 spot he had lost to Luke Browning at the original start.
Lap 5 and Tramnitz was coming under pressure from Ramos and León and while he was able to hold on to P3, Browning was struggling and lost sixth position to Sebastián Montoya having ran wide at Turn 4. The Hitech Pulse-Eight driver then came under pressure from Sami Meguetounif and the two ran wide on the entry to Les Combes, with the Frenchman getting ahead for P7.
The top six from Beganovic to Montoya were covered by just two and a half seconds as they started Lap 9 of 12, with Minì told by his race engineer to keep the pressure on his teammate. But making the moves was León as he got ahead of Ramos for P4 at the end of the Kemmel Straight, with Lindblad now up to 12th after getting past Rodin Motorsport’s Joseph Loake.
DRS had now been made available, as Minì came under pressure from Tramnitz for second. He was able to hold off the MP driver but as they squabbled, Beganovic was able to pull out a one second gap. As they started the penultimate lap of the race Minì had closed back in on Beganovic, while Tramnitz had fallen into the clutches of León.
This was playing into the hands of Meguetounif, Browning and Leonardo Fornaroli in seventh, eighth and ninth place, as they closed up to the top six. The final lap started with Beganovic and Minì having pulled out a two second gap to the rest of the field. But in the battle for the final podium place León got ahead of Tramnitz at the Kemmel Straight.
The fight for places raged on but up ahead it was Beganovic who came across the line to take his second victory of the season, with Minì in second and León in third. Tramnitz saw off Ramos and several other cars across the line to finish P4, with the Mexican driver taking fifth ahead of his Trident teammate Meguetounif.
However, the French rookie would drop down the order to P28 after being penalised for multiple track limit infringements. This pushed Browning up to sixth ahead of Montoya seventh, with Fornaroli in eighth. Oliver Goethe finished in ninth for Campos Racing, while Callum Voisin took the last point in P10.
Result: https://x.com/MsportXtra/status/1817113949722280117
UPDATE: Following the conclusion of today’s Spa-Francorchamps Sprint Race, several drivers have been handed post-race time-penalties. After the Sprint Race, the Stewards received a report from the Race Director, noting that several drivers had exceeded track limits during the Sprint, breaching the 2024 FIA Formula 3 Sporting Regulations.
Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli, Sami Meguetounif and Santiago Ramos, as well as Hitech Pulse-Eight’s Martinius Stenshorne and Jenzer Motorsport’s Charlie Wurz were found to have exceeded track limits. Therefore, they have each been assigned a five-second time penalty in accordance with Article 39.3 (a) of the FIA Formula 3 Sporting Regulations.
This drops Fornaroli from P8 to P9, while Ramos drops from fifth to eighth, with Meguetounif in P27. Stenshorne is demoted from P15 to P18 while Wurz stays in P26. For Meguetounif, the five-second penalty will be added to the 30-seconds he was given during the race.
Additionally, MP Motorsport’s Alexander Dunne, Hitech’s Luke Browning, Van Amersfoort Racing’s Tommy Smith and AIX Racing’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak have been given two separate time penalties each. Post-race, the quartet were found to have exceeded track limits on five occasions and have each been given the corresponding five-second time penalties in accordance with FIA Formula 3 Sporting Regulations.
As a result, Dunne drops down to 23rd from 14th, while Browning goes from sixth to P12. Smith is demoted from P18 to P25. Inthraphuvasak’s 10-second time penalty will be added to the 10-seconds he was given during the race, but he remains in P29. Lastly, Mari Boya has had 25 seconds added on to his time for the same track limits violations on eight separate occasions. The Campos Racing driver therefore drops from P21 to P28.
[Note: The story is as per press release]