The Rolling Estonians fight for number one
EUROPEAN FORMULA 3 MISANO (I) AUGUST 25-36 ROUND 7/10 Juri Vips could well be the most exciting car-control maestro to hit the Formula 3 European Championship since Max Verstappen. Another superb weekend for the Estonian at Misano, during which he took the third win of his rookie F3 season, means he sits just 12 points behind Motopark team-mate Dan Ticktum. As at Silverstone just seven days earlier, Vips left a venue after scoring more points than anyone else over the three races.
The other victors were Prema Powerteam pair Mick Schumacher and Ralf Aron, this duo keeping themselves on the coat-tails of the title chase, while their team-mate Marcus Armstrong lost ground but remains third. Aron’s win over compatriot Vips on a torrentially wet track in the finale was also superb as they took a one-two for a tiny Baltic nation that clearly produces racing drivers as good as their rallying counterparts.
Vips’s victory was brilliant, but it was the corresponding qualifying session that was absolutely staggering. The sweltering mid-thirties temperatures of Friday and Saturday morning had given way to thunderstorms by the time Q2 began. The kerbs at Misano are such that track limits are always an issue, and the conditions meant that this became the case at the sweepers that are normally flat in the dry. No fewer than 13 of the 22 drivers were hit with grid penalties after examinations of onboard footage. Vips was one of seven who stayed totally clean (two were let off the hook, due to only one offence), his minimum speed at the fast Turn 15 a startling 16mph up on many other leading drivers. He had pole for race two, only denied a double pole for the finale by catching Keyvan Andres – himself striving to improve – on his penultimate lap, just as he had done at Silverstone.
The second race began with the track damp due to earlier rain, but most of the field were slick-shod. Vips hung on around the outside of a fast-starting Enaam Ahmed to reclaim his lead at Turn 1, and it was Ahmed’s Hitech GP team-mate Alex Palou who emerged to challenge. Showers in the second half of the race put Vips in that invidious position of being the race leader and having to judge the conditions. Palou, still searching for his first Euro F3 win, put pressure on all the way, but acknowledged: “It’s just a shame because he’s one of the best I saw out of Turn 10 [the right-hander leading onto the back straight], and I could not overtake him.”
“It seemed honestly one of the hardest races I’ve ever been in,” sighed Vips. “I didn’t have any references, and the guys behind could see what I was doing. It was a miracle that I won the race. There were two, three, four moments every lap.”
Vips, who blamed a malfunctioning radio and inadequate tyre preparation for qualifying seventh for the opener, before driving to fifth in the race, was also on form in the finale. Polesitter Armstrong splashed into the lead, but once Aron got going he reeled in the Kiwi, and passed him neatly at Turn 8. A safety car, called after two drivers had spun into the gravel, presaged disaster for Armstrong, who was passed by Vips and Ferdinand Habsburg at the restart. Guan Yu Zhou, defending fourth, then locked up and took himself and Prema team-mate Armstrong out at Turn 4. Zhou was tearful, Armstrong understanding, but a lot of damage was done to his title hopes.
Vips then wriggled free of a titanic scrap with Carlin’s Habsburg, in which they were side by side for half a lap, before closing on Aron and securing second. “Juri had special lines – he was putting dirt on my face every lap!” laughed Habsburg after
his first podium of the season. “I enjoyed fighting him – it’s fun when you know he’s not going to try anything stupid.”
For Aron, it was a relief after a miserable Silverstone – where he’d suffered a recurrence of his Hungaroring problem of a lack of pace in the car. This was a solid weekend, during which he added a fifth and a seventh to his win. “I’m really happy after a stressful and hard weekend at Silverstone,” he said.
“The car was amazing in the rain.”
Schumacher’s win over Armstrong from pole in the opener was impressive, with Robert Shwartzman completing the podium on a weekend where Prema seemed to have a tiny advantage – until it turned wet. Ticktum was best of the rest in dry qualifying, but struggled in the wet Q2 with a “set-up-related” issue. His drives to fourth in races two and three were described as “damage-limitation”. As far as Ticktum was concerned, so was Armstrong’s removal from race three and his poor start in race two that left him outside the points. But now they both have the outstanding Vips to worry about.