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Logan Sargeant took the race lead from Victor Martins on lap one as the American managed the gap and held off Dennis Hauger in the final laps of the race. The second-place finish for the Prema man secured him the title with two races to go.
Starting Grid
12th place for Martins in qualifying put him on reverse grid pole for race one and he was joined on the front row of the grid by Charouz’s Sargeant.
Jak Crawford started from third, Hauger in fourth, MP Motorsport’s Ciao Collet in fifth, ART’s Aleksandr Smolyar in sixth, Lorenzo Colombo in seventh, Juan Manuel Correa in eighth, Frederik Vesti in ninth and Johnathan Hoggard in 10th. The Trident duo of Clement Novalak and Jack Doohan started from 11th and 12th as the latter looked to make up ground to keep his championship chances alive.
As It Happened
The lights went out and pole-sitter Martins got a good start. Sargeant in second had a look at a move into turn two and switched to the inside for the sweeping turn three before moving into the lead at turn four.
Meanwhile, 12th placed Doohan fell to 17th as he got airborne over the sausage kerb on the exit of turn two as his title chances were slipping away from him.
Onto lap two and Sargeant held the race lead with a comfortable and growing margin ahead of Martins and Crawford in third. Hauger and Collet closely followed in fourth and fifth respectively as they closed up on the podium places.
Hauger started to sniff an opportunity to steal a podium place away from Crawford at turn two, however, the Norwegian sensibly backed out. The Prema driver did manage to pass the Hitech man with DRS assistance at turn 12 on lap four.
Three laps later, Crawford fell another place as Collet made the move into turn two with DRS playing a huge part in the pass.
Martins was the next driver on Hauger’s hit list and was soon caught. After two laps of trying to make the move, the championship leader managed to claim second at the third attempt on lap 11 as he executed a perfect switchback to get past the MP Motorsport driver at turn three.
Clement Novalak continued to show impressive pace as he caught Collet, Martins and Hauger after setting the race’s fastest lap with a 1:56.259 on lap 14.
On lap 15, just as Hauger continued to make inroads on Sargeant, Tijmen Van der Helm’s engine blew out which deployed the Virtual Safety Car.
The race resumed at the end of lap 16 as Hauger continued to close in on leader Sargeant.
On the penultimate lap, Trident’s Novalak finally got past Collet into fourth at turn two. At the front, Hauger was again chipping away at Sargeant’s lead as he closed up to the American. Hauger managed to get into DRS range and closed in on the American down the straight into turn 12.
Sargeant just had enough to hold off the Prema man to win race one, ahead of the newly crowned F3 champion Hauger and Martins in third.
Novalak, Collet, Colombo, Arthur Leclerc, Vesti, Correa and Ayumu Iwasa rounded out the top 10 finishers.
Quotes from race winner Logan Sargeant and 2021 F3 champion Dennis Hauger
After the race, a delighted Logan Sargeant told Prost International how important it was to get into the lead early and build a big gap.
“Well, I think if Dennis [Hauger] was any closer at the end there I was in big trouble so yeah it was pretty important!”
“I was happy to get the lead early on and thought I had good pace throughout the first half of the race, and it was really important to build that gap, or we probably wouldn’t have won.”
Hauger, the newly-crowned F3 champion, spoke about his approach to the showdown weekend.
“I didn’t want to rush anything or think I have to win race one or qualify on pole, just going step by step through the weekend to try and maximise everything. In qualifying, we weren’t the strongest, but we just kept working coming into race one and just focussed on that.
“We knew we could get the championship in race one if we focussed on what we had to do and that was the goal just to take it race by race and focus on what we can control at the time.”
What’s Next?
After finishing in 12th, Johnathan Hoggard will start race two from pole ahead of Hitech’s Jak Crawford as the American looks to make amends after a poor race one.
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