Fluctuating fortunes for the F3 title contenders at Silverstone
Dan Ticktum moved to the top of the Formula 3 European Championship table on home ground at Silverstone with a win in the first of the three races, but as usual for this year’s series it was a weekend of fluctuating fortunes for most of the leading contenders.
What was clear was that the German Motopark team had the advantage around the challenging Silverstone GP circuit. Apart from its Red Bull Junior Ticktum, the squad celebrated Estonian rookie Juri Vips’s second victory of the season in the weekend finale, and carried Vips and Swiss Fabio Scherer to pole positions.
Ticktum’s win came after the weekend’s most exciting race. He was third on the grid, but pulled off an outstanding manoeuvre on Guan Yu Zhou to take second around the outside of Luffield on lap one. He then set off after Sacha Fenestraz – the Renault F1 protege had reversed a desperate first half of the season by grabbing pole position, in part thanks to the Carlin team being the only one of the top operations to use two full sets of tyres in Q1 from the weekend allocation of three per car for its quintet of drivers.
As the race wore on, Fenestraz found his rear tyres going off. Ticktum took a measured approach to his bid for victory, pulling back from manoeuvres where you might have expected him to just send it in his usual fashion. With four laps to go, he made a great move on Fenestraz down the inside of Stowe, the Frenchman sportingly giving him just enough room to make it through.
“The move on Zhou was on the limit of everything – it was pretty good,” smiled Ticktum. “Even the one into Stowe on Sacha was a bit of a lunge as well. I had to make my opportunity count, and once I got in front it was all right.”
With Enaam Ahmed (Hitech GP) beating Vips to third, Ticktum’s main title rival Marcus Armstrong was sixth. The Ferrari junior’s Prema Powerteam squad had saved a fresh set of tyres for each of its drivers for the races, but its ploy fell over when Mick Schumacher, Guan Yu Zhou and Ralf Aron all suffered left-rear blowouts in race one, forcing a rethink on set-up for races two and three. Armstrong backed off, fearing his own tyre failure, and lost the points lead to Ticktum.
Motopark and Hitech emulated the Carlin Q1 strategy by using their drivers’ eight remaining fresh tyres in Q2, with Scherer setting the overall fastest time and Vips taking pole for race three, based on second-fastest times.
But Scherer was beaten away from the start by Schumacher and, despite worries about the tyres in the wake of race one, the German took a classy win.
Vips tried to follow Schumacher through at Abbey, but minor contact with Scherer put him back into third. He finally found a way past Scherer – who then stopped with a broken gearshift wiring loom – but by then his tyres were shot and he could only make minor inroads into Schumacher’s lead. Motopark’s Jonathan Aberdein was third from Ahmed.
A furious Ticktum felt he’d been baulked by Prema pair Armstrong and Zhou in Q2, although both were cleared by the stewards. Armstrong beat Zhou and Ticktum to fifth, but Ticktum was harshly put back to eighth for his pass on Fenestraz at Stowe – Ticktum went off track to do it, but so did Fenestraz in defence…
Vips fended off a first-lap challenge from Fenestraz to win the finale, although his tyres faded and Fenestraz closed up late on. Aberdein was third from Ahmed, Schumacher and Ticktum, while Armstrong was sidelined on the first lap with a damaged trackrod after first-corner contact with Schumacher.