Hitech GP’s Luke Browning achieved his first Formula 3 pole position in Austria. Feeder Series spoke to Browning after the session to find out the importance of his pole and his expectations for the races this weekend.

By Tori Turner

Having won the feature race in Bahrain and taken another podium in Monaco this season, Browning was missing a pole position from his list of achievements in F3. He finally got one in Austria with a 1:20.222, less than a tenth ahead of Prema’s Arvid Lindblad.

Ahead of his second to last flying lap, Browning was at the head of a queue of cars, but he set the session-best time despite not having a tow.

“There’s a few places where we could have been on pole position, but just didn’t quite extract the lap or didn’t really go for it at the end. I think obviously in Formula 3, it’s very easy to mess up and find yourself outside the top 12,” he said. “Sometimes being a little bit more conservative, like for example in Barcelona, I think we would have been right there, a half-tenth off. The lap wasn’t amazing, but it was safe.” 

Even with the added risk of exceeding track limits and having a lap time deleted, Browning took a more aggressive approach this time on the soft tyres.

“Here was the place where I put it all on the line. It was rewarded. I knew it was going to be tough and I’d have to push on in the second sector not having a tow. It paid off,” he said. “I’m looking forward to now putting it together in the race.”

Browning acknowledged that it wouldn’t be easy for him to take his second win of the season. Since the series’ first season in 2019, only once has the polesitter at the Red Bull Ring won the feature race. 

“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “It’s probably the place where it’s least important to have pole position historically and we know that, but equally, you couldn’t be in a better place. We’ll see what our race pace is like. We’ve tried to understand the degradation on this soft tyre as much as we can. I think it’s going to be a tough graining phase, but out front in the cool air might help me.”

Crucially, the two extra points Browning earned from qualifying move him to within three points of championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli. The Williams junior argued that his championship campaign had been one of consistency, with top-five finishes in all five feature races and five of the six qualifying sessions feature races, though he has only scored once in the sprint races with eighth at Monaco.

“I think being consistent is really important,” he told Feeder Series. “We have the most consistent qualifying average, we’ve been the most consistent in the feature race finishes, now it’s just about being consistent in the sprint races. That’s what we’ve achieved today.

“The goal coming into this year was to be a championship rival, to have pole positions, to have wins. Obviously we’ve had a pole position after Macau achieved, but I think what that really gave us was the hunger of going, ‘Right can we have this this year? Are we going to be there?’ And I think with Hitech, it’s been super enjoyable so far, and I’m enjoying the journey.”

After qualifying, Browning received a three-place grid penalty for impeding Dino Beganovic at Turn 9. That drops him to 15th on the grid for the sprint race Saturday morning at 9:30 CEST, which Hitech teammate Martinius Stenshorne will start from pole.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency