Motorsport weekend wrap: PREMA clinches Teams’ title in F3, Hadjar extends lead in F2 Championship
This weekend (July 27-28), PREMA Racing secured its fifth F3 Teams’ Championship at the Belgian Grand Prix. In F2, Isack Hadjar inches closer to the Championship title with his fourth win of the season at Spa-Francorchamps.
A fantastic 1-2 Mercedes finish ended in heartbreak as on-track winner George Russell was disqualified after the race, handing the win to his teammate Lewis Hamilton. IndyCar and NASCAR were on a break with the next race scheduled in the middle of August.
F3: PREMA 1-2 helps it secure Teams’ title, Voisin takes maiden Feature race win
Dino Beganovic kept his teammate and Championship leader Gabriel Mini behind to take victory at a damp Spa-Francorchamps sprint race. What began as an all-PREMA Racing front row soon escalated into a fight for the lead after Mini got ahead of the Swede at the start.
Beganovic made good use of a Safety Car (SC) restart to take the position back and lead the PREMA 1-2 to the podium.
Callum Voisin turned a maiden F3 pole position into a first win after leading every lap of an eventful feature race. He succeeded in staying ahead of the pack despite three SC restarts. By the final lap, the Briton had built up a second’s gap to Sebastian Montoya in second to give him and Rodin Motorsport their first F3 wins.
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Though PREMA couldn’t score any points in the feature race, its closest rival ART Grand Prix fell short of the 27 points needed to take the title fight to the next round in Monza. The Italian team left the Belgian Grand Prix as five-time F3 Teams’ Champions.
F2: O’Sullivan wins rain-delayed Sprint, Hadjar extends Championship lead
ART Grand Prix’s Zak O’Sullivan converted pole position into P1 at a hazardous, wet-weather Belgian feature race. Heavy rain delayed the race but O’Sullivan kept things clean and tight in the opening laps before the red flag came out on Lap 7. With the race not reaching 50%, the top five scored points, with O’Sullivan victorious ahead of Dennis Hauger and Richard Verschoor.
Isack Hadjar had a brilliant Belgian sprint race to secure his fourth race win of the season and extend his Championship lead. The Campos Racing driver started from third and was able to slipstream his way past both of his closest Championship contenders. He passed pole-sitter Paul Aron on more than one occasion but the Estonian slowed to a halt on the final lap and dropped out of the race, missing out on crucial points.
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With another victory, Hadjar sits atop the Championship with 165 points while Aron remains on 124 in third. In the Teams’ Standings, Campos and Invicta are level with 203 points with the former leading by virtue of more wins than the latter.
F1: Hamilton inherits second win of season after Russell’s post-race disqualification
In what could have been a redemption weekend for Mercedes ended on a disappointing note after the team’s 1-2 finish was stripped following the disqualification of on-track winner George Russell.
The Austrian GP winner did everything right and more to pull off the perfect one-stop strategy at Spa and lead his teammate Lewis Hamilton to the chequered flag.
However, post-race inspections showed that Russell’s car was found underweight by one and a half kilograms, denying him his third career win. This meant that Lewis Hamilton inherited his second win of the season, further extending his win tally to 105.
He also became the second driver after Max Verstappen to become a repeat winner this season.
Oscar Piastri moved up to second place while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc rounded up the podium – his first top 3 appearance since his win in Monaco.
Mercedes could have walked away from the last race before the summer break with a major points haul but an ‘oversight’ left it trailing second-place McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship.