Trident’s Noah Strømsted won his first Formula 3 race in the sprint race at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps ahead of first-time podium finishers Ugo Ugochukwu and Charlie Wurz. Feeder Series spoke to the top three to find out how their previous experience at the circuit helped them all achieve their milestone results.

By Tori Turner

After the lights went out, reverse-grid polesitter Freddie Slater held on to his position heading into Turn 1 ahead of Strømsted and Bruno Del Pino. The top three remained unchanged throughout the opening lap of the race, but the order shifted as the second lap began.

Wurz, who started fourth, passed Del Pino down the Kemmel Straight to move up into the podium positions. Ugochukwu subsequently overtook Del Pino at the same spot on the next lap to slot into fifth having previously overtaken Nikola Tsolov on the opening lap of the race.

Crucially, Strømsted was within DRS range of Slater by that point, which aided the Mercedes junior as he lined up a move. Coming out of Raidillon and onto the Kemmel Straight, Strømsted passed Slater to take the lead of the race. By the end of sector two, the Hitech driver was already a second in arrears.

On lap four, Ugochukwu made the move on Wurz around the outside into Les Combes to snatch the final podium position. He then began closing in on Slater, who had fallen more than two seconds behind Strømsted by the midpoint of the race on lap six. The Prema driver passed Slater down the Kemmel Straight on lap seven, securing second place. 

“Experience helps a lot on the track,” Ugochukwu told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “We don’t get many laps in [free practice], so any experience you have from previous years is really good. I’ve been here twice, in F4 and FRECA. I won in [Italian] F4 [from P6] on the grid, so again another big comeback as well. It’s important to really start on the front foot because when you’re in a good position in FP, you just have to fine-tune things for quali and it’s much easier than having to make big steps.”

Wurz may have lost out to Ugochukwu, but not all hope was lost. The Trident driver executed a similar move to Ugochukwu’s on Slater to take third on lap eight and hold on for the rest of the race. 

“The main lesson is playing with the slipstream and with these long straights and how to manage sector two with all the corners,” said Wurz, an F3 sophomore. “Everything else is very different, but learning that is very useful. The same as last year here in F3. There’s a lot to learn and take in. Obviously, it’s a different car, so the things you do might be different, but in the end it’s still a race car driving around Spa.”

Slater continued to tumble down the order on lap nine. Having let Hitech teammate Martinius Stenshorne through into fourth at La Source, Slater lost a place to Tsolov on the run to Eau Rouge before experiencing a wobble heading into Raidillon, which helped Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Rafael Câmara pass as well. The 16-year-old then went off in the run-off area at Les Combes behind the championship leader.

Stenshorne failed to hold on to fourth as Tsolov overtook him at the end of lap nine. He then lost another position down the Kemmel Straight on lap 10 to Câmara, who was desperate to finish in the top five for his championship hopes. 

On the penultimate lap of the race, track limits came into play as many drivers were shown the black-and-white flag. Mari Boya received a five-second time penalty on the previous lap for exceeding track limits, pushing him down to 14th in the final results after he made a recovery drive from 16th to eighth on the road.

When Strømsted reached the chequered flag on lap 12, he had built up a gap of 6.044s over Ugochukwu in second and had also set the fastest lap of the race. The result was his first win in single-seaters since his partial Danish F4 campaign in 2021, and he did so at the circuit where he took his maiden FRegional Europe podium last year.

“I think it’s very different, this car compared to all the other cars I’ve driven around here, with the way you manage the tyres and the way you manage the race,” Strømsted told Feeder Series.

“Today was quite easy for me. I overtook, I pulled the gap and I just managed it from there. Last year, we had a lot of fighting in FRECA, even until the last laps, so it was quite different this year for me.”

Ugochukwu’s first podium of the season was Prema’s 100th in the series, and it came after he lost third place in the Austria sprint to a post-race penalty. Wurz became Austria’s first podium finisher in the series on his 35th start.

Tsolov finished just 0.440s shy of Wurz in fourth but crucially gained seven points to move up to second in the standings and keep his title hopes alive. Câmara finished just behind him in fifth to maintain his lead in the drivers’ championship, which stands at 28 points with Tim Tramnitz’s non-score.

Inthraphuvasak passed Stenshorne on the final lap of the race into Les Combes to take sixth place. The Norwegian tried to fight back but ended up seventh.

Third-place starter Del Pino finished eighth after losing out to Campos teammates Tsolov and Inthraphuvasak on lap seven. Brando Badoer picked up his first points finish of a trying season to finish ninth as Alessandro Giusti rounded out the points-paying positions in 10th.

Slater was originally 10th after Boya’s penalty was applied, but he received a combined 20 seconds in time penalties for track limits violations, which pushed him down to 26th.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency