European F3; DTM; Motogp; WTCC; NASCAR
FORMULA 3 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP HOCKENHEIM (D) OCTOBER 15-16 ROUND 10/10
LANDO NORRIS ONLY PASSED HIS DRIVING test a couple of weeks ago, and he could have swapped his Dallara for a humble hatchback adorned with ‘L’ plates – with his instructor alongside – and still won the Formula 3
European Championship title in the first race last weekend at Hockenheim.
Norris’s only rival Maximilian Gunther had qualified way down in 12th for a race the German needed to win, and even in that scenario a top-eight would do for Norris. Gunther got up to 10th in the race, but his required nine-car pile-up among the spaced-out field ahead predictably never came and Norris was deservedly crowned.
As Norris’s Carlin team began its celebrations, the Hockenheim finale gratifyingly turned into an exhibition of the talent from the 17-year-old Glastonbury lad’s main 2017 rivals. It was the superb Joel Eriksson who’d beaten him to the chequered flag in that first race, before Callum Ilott and then Gunther triumphed in timely fashion to leave a calling card to those from higher-level series seeking talent for ’18.
Ilott was the fastest driver of the weekend, topping free practice and then squeaking ahead of Norris with a superb last-lap effort in first qualifying to plant his Prema Powerteam machine on pole, while Norris ran off the road at the fast right-hander into the stadium in his bid to respond. With Carlin suffering an overall lack of grip across its cars in second qualifying – Norris was seventh fastest, with his quickest team-mate down in 11th – the Farnham team predictably put all its eggs in one basket and gave all its drivers four new tyres for the opening race, using up the remainder of their allocations for the weekend.
Norris failed to make the most of it at the start, dropping a position to third. “I didn’t get a good start,” he related. “There was not enough pre-load so the initial jump off the line… Well, I didn’t really jump!” Eriksson, who like Ilott had two new Hankooks on his Motopark machine, speared into second place, then braved it out in a thrilling first-lap fight with Ilott to move into the lead. It culminated in Ilott retaliating into the Mercedes Arena, which in turn allowed Norris down his inside into the tight left-hander. A bump from Norris – who survived a stewards’ investigation – sent Ilott down to fourth, as Ferdinand Habsburg jumped them both for second.
Norris took six laps to clear Carlin team-mate Habsburg, but couldn’t get close enough to Eriksson, the Mclaren Formula 1 protege only
moving within a second of the Swedish BMW junior on the final lap. “I did what I could to catch Joel but the pace was too similar,” he explained. In the wake of what had happened when the duo collided last time out at the
Red Bull Ring, that was probably just as well for the Carlin team’s blood pressure…
Gunther had put his lack of pace in first qualifying down to “nothing huge – it’s always about details”. He’s had a pretty poor second half of the season, but he and Prema team-mate Ilott dominated second qualifying. This took place right after DTM free practice, and it seemed that the rubber on the track had a detrimental effect on overall grip across much of the field. Not for Prema though. The other effect was that the peak of the tyres was very narrow and relatively early, and Ilott maximised this to perfection with a stonking lap that put him over a quarter of a second clear. But on second-best times, deciding the race-three grid, he was pipped by Gunther, with Guan Yu Zhou completing a Prema 1-2-3.
With Prema not having great pace in the first race, and Ilott struggling on his way to fourth with damage to his car from the Norris clash, he had a change to the brakes for the subsequent clash. Gunther tried to slip past on the opening lap and the Prema trio stayed close through the first three laps while Ilott bedded in his brakes, before unleashing his spectacular talent with a brilliant display to win by 11.3s.
Normally, F3 race winners say “I got a good start, I built a gap and then it was a case of managing the tyres”. This time was different. There may have been exhortations from the team to slow down, and Ilott did drop his pace by a tenth or two, but he completed 13 of the 20 flying laps quicker than the best anyone else managed, with his quickest half a second clear of his closest rival. To be fair, Gunther was struggling with a left-front tyre that was “destroyed” – he’d flat-spotted it trying to pass Ilott on lap one, and further lock-ups meant
“my pace was nowhere compared to Callum”. Afterwards, Ilott quietly and cheekily quipped: “I just wanted to mentally destroy them.”
Zhou was also worried with his rears going off, allowing him to just hold off the charging Eriksson, who’d taken half the race to get the better of Jake Hughes in a great scrap for fourth. The Swede, just an all-round, proper bloke, had no problem with Hughes’s fierce defence, which prevented him snatching a podium from Zhou. “I have to give credit to Jake,” he said. “He drove very well defensively, which was obviously a shame for me but nothing to complain about – fair and square. You can tell he’s a good driver.”
That Prema 1-2-3 confirmed that the Euro F3 teams’ championship was heading to Italy for the seventh time. Eriksson pipped Gunther to the series runner-up spot, but the Austro-bavarian Mercedes DTM junior got some consolation by winning the finale. Eriksson had to battle from fifth on the grid, but was second by lap three. With Gunther having saved two new tyres for this race – Eriksson was on all-old – it proved impossible to close the gap, and a full-course yellow for a Habsburg shunt cost him the best part of two seconds. Even so, Eriksson wasn’t too bothered about pushing for the win, knowing second was enough for the series runner-up slot.
From the front row, Ilott’s revs had dropped after his initial launch and he had to fight his way past Hughes for fifth. Ahead of them, Zhou spoke of a “really intense race for me” fending off the attacking Norris for third. “I had to be really good in the first and last sector, because he was quick on the straight [in the middle sector].” He accomplished that in style, even though Norris got pretty close as he challenged on the last lap.
Norris hadn’t even finished in the points in the middle race, running wide at the Spitzkehre hairpin while battling Eriksson on the opening lap and toiling on his worst set of tyres. But it didn’t matter. The ‘L’ plates – ‘L’ for ‘Lando’ – are now on that championship trophy.