Hughes ends his four-year wait
FIA FORMULA 3 BARCELONA (ESP) 15-16 AUGUST ROUND 6
Jake Hughes started his very first race on the Formula 1 support bill – in the GP3 Series – from pole position in May 2016 at Barcelona. Since then he’d won four reversed-grid races in three and a half seasons on the F1 undercard, but a victory in the main Saturday event had always eluded him. That was put right last weekend, when he beat Logan Sargeant to honours in the
FIA Formula 3 Championship.
Series leader Sargeant edged 26-yearold Hughes on Friday to take his third successive pole. The Prema Racing driver has comfortably the best qualifying record this season, but has often struggled to transfer that supremacy into the races.
But he’d picked up his first FIA F3 victory the previous time out at Silverstone, and held the lead on the long run to Turn 1 on the opening lap in Spain.
The safety car was required on that first lap to recover the stricken machine of Bent Viscaal, and Sargeant was unable to shake off the chasing Hughes at the restart. Three laps later Hughes set the fastest lap and swooped around the outside of Sargeant at Turn 1 to take the lead.
Hughes had to survive a second safetycar period before taking victory for HWA Racelab. Prema’s reigning Formula Regional European champion Frederik Vesti, who’d started a lowly 14th, had stopped on track to precipitate the caution, and it was bad news at the restart for Sargeant’s other Prema team-mate and main title rival: Oscar
Piastri slid wide at the final corner, and dropped from fourth to sixth place behind the battling Clement Novalak (showing much-improved form with Carlin) and David Beckmann (Trident).
Things weren’t ideal for Sargeant either. Red Bull junior Liam Lawson believed that engine issues had cost him a shot at his maiden FIA F3 pole. He started his Hitech GP car from third, and wrestled second from Sargeant around the outside of Turn 1 in a similar fashion to Hughes’s earlier pass. But the Kiwi could do nothing to stop Hughes.
Matteo Nannini – nephew of 1989 Japanese Grand Prix winner Alessandro – picked up his first F3 point in 10th place, putting his Jenzer Motorsport car on reversed-grid pole for the Sunday race.
That was dominated by Renault junior Piastri, who stormed from fifth to first on the opening lap. He was in third place by Turn 1 and capitalised on minor contact between Nannini and Alex Peroni to pass the Italian around the outside of Turn 3 and dive down the inside of fellow Australian Peroni one corner later.
Piastri controlled the race thereafter, while Peroni earned his best series finish in second. The 17-year-old Nannini, in only his second year in car racing, came home in third. Hughes struggled to match his supreme Saturday pace and finished where he’d started in 10th, one spot behind Beckmann, who is the only driver to have scored points in every race this term.
Piastri’s first triumph since he won the season-opening race at the Red
Bull Ring leaves the championship fight exactly the same as it was heading into the weekend, with Sargeant – who was fifth on Sunday behind Richard Verschoor – leading Piastri by a single point.