Aron takes Zandvoort F3 double
It only takes one weekend to change the perception of a driver. His victory in the wet Pau Grand Prix (which counted only for half-points) notwithstanding, it would be easy to write off third-year Formula 3 European Championship driver Ralf Aron as not quite title material. But that would be without factoring in an early-season problem on his car that cost straight-line speed, bad luck with a very marginal jumped-start penalty at the Hungaroring, and showing the right pace at the wrong time in rain-affected Norisring qualifying.
At a warm and sunny Zandvoort, Aron proved he could do it. He led the first two races of the weekend from start to finish, propelling himself to four and a half points off precocious rookie Prema Powerteam stablemate Marcus Armstrong at the top of the table. He wasn’t quite the quickest – Guan Yu Zhou and Dan Ticktum claimed the poles – but Aron was the most complete, and composed.
From each of his front-row starts to the Saturday races, Aron made a marginally better getaway than the poleman and squeezed down the inside on the run to Tarzanbocht. With Zhou in pursuit in the opening race, Aron thought that tyre degradation could be a factor, and his conservatism in the first couple of laps – “I underpushed and he attacked” – left him vulnerable. So did a moment at the chicane, where “I completely lost the car”. But over the second half of the race he stabilised the gap, while Zhou in turn had Mick Schumacher bobbing around behind, although Schumacher started suffering clutch slip late in the race and reckoned he was lucky to finish. Armstrong had a new clutch fitted for this race after dramas in Q2, and completed a Prema 1-2-3-4.
It was Ticktum who fell victim to Aron’s superior start in race two. As the Estonian slipped down the inside towards Tarzan, Schumacher made a better getaway than both and drew to the outside. Aron moved left to claim a better line into the corner, bumping Ticktum into the unfortunate Schumacher who, with two wheels on the dust to the left, braked and spun deep into the gravel, this and two other two-car incidents bringing out the safety car.
With the left-rear wheelrim and pushrod bent, second-placed Ticktum was suffering from understeer. One lap after the restart, Ferrari protege Armstrong worked a neat move on the Red Bull Junior at Tarzan, going wide on entry, then cutting back on the inside on exit. As Ticktum understeered wide onto the dirt, Zhou was also through. Cue another Prema 1-2-3, with Armstrong reducing the gap to Aron to as little as half a second before the leader pulled away again to his second victory of the day.
Ticktum’s travails continued when he went too hot into the chicane. He ran wide, and Alex Palou immediately went past for fourth, and Ferdinand Habsburg got a slipstream on both down the main straight to further demote the Motopark star.
Ticktum had taken a double pole in second qualifying, meaning he would also start Sunday’s finale from the front. This was a contentious session: Prema men
Aron, Schumacher and Armstrong had earned second, third and fifth respectively on the grid for race two, but had only put one decent lap in when gravel appeared on the track at the chicane. Their second-best times – determining the grid for race three – were good only for 17th, 18th and 23rd respectively, Armstrong’s progress stymied further by a slipping clutch. Some Prema
people reckoned Ticktum had spread the gravel with a deliberate moment; Ticktum, rolling his eyes, retorted that it was actually Motopark team-mate Juri Vips who’d gone off. Spicy words against Ticktum from Aron and Armstrong in the second-race press conference added further to the cauldron of controversy that bubbled this weekend…
With Aron and Armstrong way back on the grid, Ticktum looked odds-on to claim the championship lead in the finale. But no: things are never that simple with a driver who may as well be lifted straight out of a comic book as far as drama is concerned. His clutch got too hot on the grid in the early-morning 26C ambient, he pre-loaded it the same as before (but too much for the conditions): “The pedal was getting longer and longer and longer; I got to the point of no return and I had to go.” Vips, alongside on the front row, got confused when he saw his team-mate move and stalled.
Nikita Troitskiy, whose form has been improving throughout his rookie season with Carlin, had done a tidy job in qualifying to take third on second-best times. He fended off a first-corner challenge from Zhou – who was back on consistent and quick form this weekend – and surprised everyone by keeping pace with Ticktum until the leader inevitably had to serve a jumped-start penalty. This race had an early red flag, because of the inability of the safety crew to remove a car from a gravel trap that’s been part of the Zandvoort furniture for donkey’s years. That was as unimpressive as Troitskiy’s win over Zhou and Carlin team-mate Jehan Daruvala was the opposite. Yet another unpredictable development in this wildest of F3 seasons.