Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov won an entertaining Formula 3 sprint race in Bahrain after holding off the attacks of Freddie Slater, who took home second in his first-ever race in the series. After the race, Feeder Series spoke to Tsolov, Slater and third-placed Tuukka Taponen about how they managed their tyres and the race as a whole.

By Daniele Spadi

Starting from fifth on the grid, Tsolov went on the attack straight away, overtaking Alessandro Giusti at the opening corner complex and setting his sights on the top three. At the front, Joshua Dufek held the race lead from reverse-grid pole, while Slater got the move done around the outside of Martinius Stenshorne at Turn 4 to climb up to second.

Slater wasted no time in attacking Dufek for the lead, making the move stick into Turn 1 on lap three. Tsolov also passed Stenshorne for third at the same spot.

“On those first two laps, you can’t mess about. You have got to get on with it,” Slater told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “We were all starting behind cars, so we had to get on with it at the start. I knew what I had to do: I needed to get into the lead as soon as possible, and that was the goal.”

At the end of the next lap, the safety car came out following a collision between Prema teammates Ugo Ugochukwu and Brando Badoer, both McLaren juniors, at Turn 1. The former retired from the race on the spot and the latter had to pit with a puncture.

At the restart at the end of lap six, Tsolov began pushing his tyres more, passing Dufek for second into Turn 1 as he sought to catch race leader Slater.

“In the first few laps I had to save tyres,” the Bulgarian told Feeder Series when asked about his game plan throughout the race. “But then I saw the people around me were slower than me even though I was saving.

“Me and my engineer decided during the race that it’s time to make up some places if it doesn’t hurt my race a lot. But I think overtaking, defending and just going offline was killing the tyres a lot.”

Tsolov and Slater then engaged in a fantastic wheel-to-wheel battle that lasted for three laps. Tsolov made several lunges on lap nine and 10, and though the AIX driver was able to defend the lead at first, the Campos driver ultimately got the job done at Turn 4 on lap 11.

Behind the two of them, the fight for third also came to life. ART’s Tuukka Taponen, who started seventh, got past Martinius Stenshorne for third at the same time, having already passed Dufek on lap nine.

The Finn, who had elected to save his tyres in the first part of the race, quickly gained on Tsolov and Slater as they squabbled over first. The Ferrari junior’s charge, however, came to a halt on lap 15 thanks to a safety car period for the stopped cars of Ivan Domingues and polesitter Dufek, who collided while fighting for 13th.

“I managed to grab a few places at the start,” Taponen told Feeder Series. “I was in quite a good situation. I had a little bit of a gap to the back, so I was able to save the tyres a little bit quite early in the race. I think that’s why I was coming quite fast at the end before the safety car came out.”

As green flag racing resumed with two laps to go, Slater tried his best to overtake Tsolov, who complained about tyre wear to his engineer in the final stages of the race. The AIX driver seemed to have less trouble managing his tyres despite being in his maiden F3 race. 

“When [Tsolov] got in front, we were managing [the tyres] more,” he told Feeder Series. “We started to pick the pace up as I saw Nikola was starting to struggle. If it wasn’t such an interfered race, I think it would have been a different race in terms of strategy and the way I played it.”

Eventually, Tsolov was able to fend off Slater to take home his fourth win in the series, equalling the record for most career victories in F3 history in his third season. The other six to have done so are Frederik Vesti, Dennis Hauger, Jack Doohan, Zak O’Sullivan, Franco Colapinto and Arvid Lindblad.

The Briton was still happy to take home second – as well as the fastest lap – in what was a stellar debut race. This result makes him the second youngest driver to score a podium in the series, with Arvid Lindblad maintaining the record by 40 days. Both scored their first top-three finishes in F3 on debut in the Bahrain sprint race, with Lindblad taking the win last year.

Taponen tried to make his move on the top two thanks to his better tyres but failed to do so. Having risen to fifth from 10th on the grid mid-race, Voisin eventually grabbed fourth, overtaking Stenshorne on the penultimate lap of the race.

Behind Stenshorne, MP Motorsport took home nine points, with Tim Tramnitz and Giusti finishing in sixth and seventh respectively. Christian Ho brought home eighth place for DAMS as Trident’s Charlie Wurz and Noah Strømsted rounded out the top 10.

Their teammate Câmara remarkably climbed to his original starting spot of 12th after stalling the car at the start, missing out on points by less than a second. The Brazilian will have the chance to make up the lost ground in the championship in Sunday’s feature race, which he is set to start from pole position ahead of Voisin and Wurz.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency