In one of the most hectic sessions of 2023, Grégoire Saucy scored his maiden pole position in FIA Formula 3. Already one of the best drivers on one-lap pace this season, the Swiss driver finally managed to put it all together and put his ART in front of everyone else for Sunday’s Feature Race. However, the main talking points were two other variables such as track limits and traffic, the former costing Prema’s Paul Aron his first pole position, as he ultimately lost his fastest lap that put him in front of Saucy and slipped down to fourth in the process. The latter was impossible to avoid, with almost 25 drivers that ended up in a single camera shot into Turn 3 with five minutes left on the clock. As the grid gets ready for the Sprint Race on Saturday morning, should the championship re-evaluate the qualifying format to improve both quality and safety in the near future?

By Daniele Spadi

It was a tough session to predict, as qualifying is often very tight here in Spielberg. With a short and fast-flowing track like the Red Bull Ring, it’s easy to find very close results in qualifying, and today was no different, as Grégoire Saucy got the better of Prema’s Dino Beganovic by just 0.004s.

The Swiss has been rapid all season long on one-lap pace, qualifying third in Bahrain and second in Australia. Saucy seemed to have just missed out on pole once again as Paul Aron made his way up to the top of the standings, but the Estonian driver got his lap deleted because of track limits, finally giving the ART driver his maiden pole position of his F3 career.

“It is a big moment, first pole in F3. It’s really nice and here at the Red Bull Ring,” a very happy Saucy said after his qualifying efforts. “I’m really happy, and for the team also. We did quite a lot of work during the small break. I’m really happy for ART, for all my sponsors, my family at home. This pole is really nice.”

Qualifying was definitely a story of both consistency and finding the right space. It was very difficult for the drivers to keep their focus, as traffic can be really frustrating to deal with and track conditions had to be interpreted in the best way possible. Moreover, track limits were heavily enforced by the stewards, with Austria being a historical track for them to change the outcomes of qualifying sessions and races.

“At the end, I managed quite well to find a gap with the driver in front and I got a good tow,” Saucy added. “I started the lap quite close to the driver in front and hoped he wouldn’t make a mistake, and he was quite fast, so I managed to have a good tow and a good lap.”

Stay on track

“That’s the main topic I think from the drivers here, it’s track limits,” championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto following his qualifying efforts. The Brazilian had a good showing, getting back into the top three as he posted the third-best time of Friday’s final session.

“I think everyone at least lost one lap during this weekend. It’s not easy: the track is tough, you need to always try to push the limits in the high speed and, by consequence, sometimes if you go a bit over, you [get] track limits in Turn 9 or 10.” Saucy agreed with the Trident man, as he talked about struggling with track limits. “It’s a track where we can easily [exceed] track limits, but as I say. For everyone it’s the same, that’s the rules and we need to don’t [go over] track limits,” the pole sitter said.

Many drivers saw their lap times get deleted, as the standings changed minute after minute because of that. With the high-speed nature of the track, it was a predictable outcome of today’s qualifying, the Red Bull Ring often causing trouble in this department. 

In practice, many drivers found this out the hard way in their first outing with Formula 3 machinery here in Austria. The likes of Gabriele Minì, Luke Browning and Leonardo Fornaroli, together with more experienced drivers like Franco Colapinto and Josep María Martí, all lost their fastest lap time of the first session of the weekend due to track limits violations. In qualifying, it was Paul Aron who paid the biggest price, as he lost pole position going over the limit into turn nine. Nikita Bedrin was another driver who exceeded track limits at the end of the session, and the driver who had been in the top five tumbled down to 22^nd place.

Traffic paradise

During the session’s 30 minutes, some camera shots could have easily been mistaken for race photos as drivers pulled alongside one another while trying to find the correct spacing on track. Eventually, everyone managed to find a suitable part of the track to use – or almost everyone, as Zak O’Sullivan received a three-place grid penalty for the Sprint Race for impeding the Van Amersfoort Racing car of Tommy Smith at Turn 10. However, it was extremely difficult for the drivers in the final stages of qualifying, as everyone tried to go out on track at the best possible time in order to set the final laps of the session.

“It was quite messy at the start, because everyone wants a tow so everyone slowed down,” Saucy said when asked about handling traffic during the session. “I think the traffic we had in qualifying was not ideal. […] We need to adapt for the traffic, try to do the warmup we want with the traffic.”

Thankfully, nothing overly dangerous happened during the session, even though the massive traffic jam that got created today – especially at the end of the session – had the potential to cause big accidents.

“I think the queuing before starting the lap is not ideal at all,” Prema’s Dino Beganovic added. “I think there are some things that potentially should be changed because it’s also really dangerous, and if a car is pushing so much behind it can be a dangerous situation.”

The series has already tested a different qualifying format in Monaco. Although the said format was implemented because of the nature of the track, questions are starting to be asked about the possibility of changing things around to avoid traffic and potential incidents that it could cause.

Sure, a 30-minute qualifying with 30 cars out on track is really fun to watch and makes for a very entertaining session, but the safety aspect of it cannot be ignored. Also, Formula 3 is yet to visit iconic race tracks that usually see traffic issues such as Spa and, most notably, Monza, where things could get heated like they did in the past, especially since the Temple of Speed is now the season finale, too.

Though a change is very unlikely to come mid-season, both drivers and teams will be eager to say something if today’s course of events was to be repeated in the future, especially as it could change the fate of a very closely-fought championship.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency