In FIA F3’s maiden visit to the principality, a wet practice session and a shorter qualifying than usual left drivers wondering how their cars were going to behave on heavy fuel and worn soft tyres. With tyre degradation being higher than expected, it was Campos’ Pepe Martí who took home the Sprint Race win, getting the best of Leonardo Fornaroli and Grégoire Saucy to take his second win of the year. Feeder Series spoke to the top three drivers of Saturday’s Sprint Race about the challenging conditions they had to face during the race.

By Daniele Spadi

Martí was in a class of his own today, finishing eight seconds clear of the other competitors. The Spaniard, who started from the reverse-grid pole after his qualifying efforts, made the best out of the situation by getting a perfect start and negotiating the only Safety Car period very well after a first-lap incident that saw Jonny Edgar retiring from the race only metres after the start.

“It’s a dream come true,” a very happy Martí said after getting his second race win of the season. “Everyone wants to win Monaco, and to do it in my first race, even if it’s the Sprint Race, it’s a great feeling.”

However, it wasn’t the easiest of races for the Campos driver, especially in the opening stages.

“It was a pretty difficult race in the beginning, when I saw Leo [Fornaroli] really close to me in the first four, three laps after the Safety Car. […] No one knew what the degradation was going to be like, so it was a bit of a ‘what is going to happen’ situation.”

Martí was then able to preserve his tyres a lot better compared to his rivals, pulling a big gap between himself and Fornaroli to win the opening race of the weekend by more than eight seconds, the largest margin of the season.

Will tyre degradation be an issue in the feature race?

Not historically an issue in Monaco, tyre degradation was actually a big factor in the Sprint Race. Drivers started to experience high degradation towards the middle part of the race, and in the end, everyone had to manage the tyres as opposed to the other rounds of the championship. Martí commented on the difficulties that came with such high degradation.

“[It was] pretty challenging. Obviously going in was really going into the unknown, no one knew how the soft was going to behave in a race distance, and it was, I think for all of us at least, quite strange. No one expected to have a lot of [tyre degradation] in Monaco, [but] we had the exact opposite, a lot of deg and we had to manage quite a lot.”

However, Martí ended up being very gentle on his tyres, handling the situation really well and building his lead in the final stages of the race.

“I think from my personal side I think I did pretty well. I think I saved the tyres as best as I could, and when I saw that I was going to make it to the end I started pushing again, so I was quite happy with that. But the tyres [are] for sure going to be a deciding factor tomorrow.”

Martí was not the only one struggling with tyres. In fact, his rivals had a worse time than him, too.

“From mid-race to the end I started to struggle with the fronts, especially in sector two,” explained today’s second-place finisher Fornaroli. The Italian rookie, who finished on the podium for the first time this season, had a solid performance from second on the grid. “It was the worst part for me because in the slow corners, I had a lot of understeer and I couldn’t rotate the car. I was just trying to go to the end of the race without exaggerating with the front tyres.”

A difficult race with little preparation

The unknown level of tyre degradation was due to a lack of practice runs because of the tough weather conditions of Friday. As rain hit the streets of the principality during free practice, the drivers only had a few minutes to discover the track on dry conditions in the final stages of the session and went into qualifying with no real indication of how the car was going to behave on a dry track.

“Of course it was wet in FP, so it was not the easiest thing,” Saucy told Feeder Series. The Swiss driver, who finished third in today’s race, gained a place at the start after a great move on the outside of Sainte-Dévote on Taylor Barnard. “I just did quite a lot of laps in FP to learn the track to get some mileage [on] the track in Monaco, and then we had some few laps in the end of FP with the slick tyres, so that was good. Then we just [went] to qualifying, it was only 16 minutes and not so many laps, and I just managed to go each time closer to the wall.”

For both Saucy and Fornaroli, racing here previously in a series such as the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) was definitely of help.

“I did the race here last year with FRECA, so at least I had some reference, so it wasn’t very difficult,” Fornaroli confirmed. ”But yeah, at the start of qualifying I felt very comfortable with the car, but we were missing a lot with the pace compared to the top guys because I was pushing as hard as I can, but I got [from] the radio that we were missing a lot [of pace].”

Martí, however, was racing in Monaco for the first time in his career. 

“For me, I think it was a little bit more damaging the fact that we didn’t have running in the dry because obviously in difference to [Fornaroli and Saucy] I’ve never raced in Monaco and I’ve never raced on a street circuit before, so it was a little bit of a mystery to me,” the Spaniard told Feeder Series.

“Quali was just like having a blindfold on. I think my first push [lap] was one of the best in my group, but obviously not having had any running at all in the dry we had a car that was just really, really lazy and didn’t help. […] Going into today was a little bit of a mystery, not knowing anything, or how the tyres were going to behave, or how the track was going to prove.”

Tomorrow’s Feature Race could potentially prove to be even more difficult to handle, with four more laps of racing and different temperatures as the race will start three hours earlier than the Sprint Race. With many drivers struggling to get through the opening race of the weekend on what is the softest compound available, the race will definitely be one to watch as polesitter Gabriele Minì will try and defend from the attacks of Prema’s Dino Beganovic and Paul Aron, who will start the Feature Race directly behind the Italian.

Header photo credit: Formula 3