Ahmed double lifts him to the top
EUROPEAN FORMULA 3 HUNGARORING (H) JUNE 2-3 ROUND 2/10
Few expected Enaam Ahmed to be leading the Formula 3 European Championship after the opening pair of rounds. Least of all, it seems, the chirpy London lad himself. But after two victories at the Hungaroring – his pair of successes on Sunday also made him the first two-time winner of 2018 – that’s exactly what he is doing.
His dominant BRDC British F3 season of 2017 notwithstanding, Ahmed by his own admission struggled when he began his winter testing programme with Hitech GP, and realisation dawned that he would have to work ultra-hard to get close to expected team leader Alex Palou. This he did, while Hitech seems to have developed a Dallara-mercedes that is ultra-forgiving. Ahmed, and even more so fellow BRDC British F3 graduate team-mate Ben Hingeley, both have spectacular, improvisational driving styles that bely the cliche that you have to corner on rails to be quick in F3. “I’m really aggressive with braking late, so I need an understeery car with the rear on the ground,” admitted Ahmed. “I need a really stable car, while other F3 cars I drove don’t suit me.”
Of all the places you wouldn’t expect this style to work, it’s the Hungaroring, full as it is of long, medium-speed corners. But that Hitech car appears to have a very kind, large operating window that allows Ahmed to do his flamboyant stuff, while Palou, who’s so precise you’d put money on him winning a contest of steering an F3 car around a 50p piece, prefers more front end on his chassis.
Ahmed did struggle with balance in
Friday qualifying, and converted this into seventh place in the opening race on Saturday morning – where his race pace was extremely good, and where his weekend changed. As he admitted, “since Friday I’ve been busting my balls to try to be quick here”. A double pole was denied him in Saturday afternoon qualifying by Dan Ticktum, the winner of the opening race of the weekend stamping in a last-gasp session-topper, although on second-best times Ahmed grabbed pole for race three.
Ticktum bogged down from pole in race two, allowing Ahmed into an easy lead, while Marcus Armstrong also got past and into second place. Red Bull Junior Ticktum settled into third place, but a brakeline failure left him with no brakes on the left-rear on the fifth lap, and he was out. Meanwhile, Prema Powerteam starlet Armstrong was becoming familiar with the Hungaroring tradition of a pursuer’s tyres falling away, meaning that once someone is out in front it becomes almost impossible to keep pace with them. “I was close to Enaam in the beginning,” said the Ferraribacked Kiwi, “and I was surprised how quick I was, but eventually I fell off a wee bit.” Palou closed in on him a little, Armstrong’s cause not helped by a floppy mirror.
This was the only race of the weekend where Ticktum and Armstrong didn’t collide at Turn 1 – just as they did in the Pau finale. In the opener, Armstrong’s magnificent start from fifth on the grid brought him level – on a track damp from earlier rain – with the Mclaren Autosport BRDC Award winner. Armstrong had the inside line, but Ticktum’s right-front wing snagged the
left-rear tyre of the Prema machine, sending it to the pits with a puncture. Ticktum continued with his right-front suspension slightly askew, and built a margin over Ralf Aron, who headed Guan Yu Zhou, Robert Shwartzman and Mick Schumacher in a Prema 2-3-4-5 – on the road.
Unfortunately Aron had wobbled on the grid as he preloaded the clutch. He never even moved outside his grid box, and reckoned the officials had been distracted by his head moving, but was pinged with a five-second penalty. His blistering opening lap from seventh to second – “To be honest I didn’t do a great start; I think everyone was a bit more clueless than I was!” – was converted to fifth in the results.
Armstrong, whose starts are consistently superb, got a great launch from the second row in the finale to run side by side with Ticktum and Ahmed to Turn 1. Ahmed wisely backed out, and Ticktum and Armstrong collided – while off the track in the runoff – on the exit. Armstrong was out again, and Ticktum was temporarily down to fourth before Palou and Shwartzman came together at Turn 2.
Ahmed’s subsequent win was the most convincing of the weekend, as Ticktum beat Schumacher to second, the podium trio all grinning about this being a reprise of their 2014 World and European Junior Karting seasons. The respect they have for each is clear, as is Ahmed’s for all his rivals. You can tell he’s a bit taken aback by this early success, but make no mistake: he’s a contender this season.