Ugo Ugochukwu became Formula 3’s first repeat winner of the season following a crushing victory in the Silverstone sprint, finishing with a 17.023-second winning margin ahead of AIX Racing’s Yevan David and his Campos Racing teammate Théophile Naël. Feeder Series spoke to the top three drivers about how they managed the 18 laps of the race.

By Cliona Sheerin

Silverstone delivered one of the most intense and exciting multi-car battles for the podium positions in recent F3 history. But for the race winner, it was a much smoother run to the chequered flag at the 5.891-kilometre circuit.

On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, Ugochukwu took his country to the top step on British soil in Saturday’s sprint race. The American driver took the maximum points haul possible, executing a perfect race to lead every lap from pole and take the additional point for fastest lap. Moreover, his 17.023s winning margin was the largest ever in the current iteration of FIA F3, exceeding the previous record by 3.552s.

“At the beginning of the race, Yevan was quite a bit close. He was just about in my DRS so I was trying to manage that as best as possible,” Ugochukwu told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “And then the gap increased and obviously made my race a lot easier, but still [I] had to focus a little bit, make sure I wasn’t using too much of my tyres just in case someone came strong at the end. My engineer was updating me about the gaps behind and I could see on the TV quite a bit of action.

“After a certain point I knew I just had to bring it home. That came from the good strategy at the start of the race, which allowed us to be a bit less under pressure towards the end.”

Polesitter Ugochukwu maintained first place off the line with a clean start from the pack behind. David was right there with him throughout the first few corners, using the headwind-bolstered slipstream along the Wellington Straight to draw alongside the Campos driver. But Ugochukwu’s defence could not be breached, and David was unable to pull off a move for the lead around the outside of Brooklands. 

Alessandro Giusti and James Wharton also held their places off the line, while Noah Strømsted made a first-lap move on Maciej Gładysz for fifth place around the outside on the exit of Luffield. 

Naël from 11th had the best opening sector of the top 12, slingshotting past Ernesto Rivera and Louis Sharp ahead. By Stowe, he was on the back of Fionn McLaughlin for eighth place, making the pass at Vale. Though Naël lost the position again on the Hangar Straight on lap two, he retook it a lap later by utilising the outside line at Brooklands, which turned into the inside line at Luffield.

At six of 18 laps, the gap between Ugochukwu and David behind was teetering on the one-second limit needed to use DRS, with the rest of the field down to Kanato Le in 17th all within DRS range of the car in front. That train, however, was soon to break up.

By lap eight, Giusti was rapidly losing pace, and Wharton took advantage to sweep around the inside of Brooklands and get the move done into Luffield. Strømsted then steamed down the inside of the struggling Frenchman at Stowe, with teammate De Palo following him through at the same spot a lap later. 

The order rearranged itself further on lap 10. Naël repeated his earlier move on McLaughlin to pass Gładysz, moving up the inside of the ART driver at Luffield. The Polish driver did attempt to get back in front, but there was no space around the outside on the exit of the corner and he took a short trip to the grass for his efforts.

Strømsted was next to make a move, this time on Wharton for third place as he manoeuvred around the outside of the Australian through the sweeping Maggots and Becketts complex. His teammate Matteo De Palo soon followed through at Stowe as Giusti then dropped further down the order, losing out to Naël into Stowe and both Gładysz and McLaughlin with a compromised line through Vale.

All this squabbling among the top 10 enabled leader Ugochukwu to stretch his legs and extend his lead to more than six seconds by the end of lap 12. The chasing pack did not help their case on that tour either as the two Tridents running in third and fourth touched wheels at Vale, but De Palo and Strømsted were able to carry on with nothing lost but some ground to David in front. 

Naël took this opportunity to get tucked in behind the Trident drivers, and on lap 14, he threw his Campos down the inside of De Palo at Brooklands with a late move on the Italian for fourth position. The drivers had soon bridged the gap once more to David in front, and the Sri Lankan driver had to defend for all his worth for the remainder of the race to maintain his podium position. Strømsted tried everything on laps 15 and 16 to get in front, but David’s defence denied him time and time again. 

De Palo and Naël resumed their battle on lap 16 through Maggots and Becketts, and a poor exit out of Chapel left Naël vulnerable through Stowe. De Palo needed no second invitation to reclaim fourth place, and he then set after his teammate in front on the following lap. When Strømsted lost ground after another failed move on David for second, De Palo saw an opportunity to move up the inside of Woodcote – and duly took it. 

Ugochukwu’s lead amounted to an astonishing 14 seconds heading onto the final tour. But all the action was to unfold behind him as the remaining places on the podium were very much still for grabs. Naël was first to make a move, getting back up to fourth following a wide moment for Strømsted at Luffield. 

In front, as Ugochukwu took the chequered flag, De Palo was lining up a move on David for second heading down to Stowe. He positioned his car around the outside but ran out of road on exit and headed off track. That gave David the reprieve he needed, while De Palo was now under pressure from the charging Naël behind. But a lock-up from David into Vale bunched the three drivers up once more, and it was Naël who got the best run out of Vale and into the final corner, shooting up the inside of De Palo at the final opportunity and snatching third place at the flag by 0.130 seconds. David held on ahead for second to take Sri Lanka’s first ever podium in the series.

As with any race in which the pack runs tightly together, finding the balance between managing tyres and making up positions was crucial for the rest of the podium finishers today.

“For me, it was really important to stay in the DRS zone, even though I had to push a bit more for my tyres,” Naël told Feeder Series. “But once you get out of DRS, then it’s super tricky to come back. So [the] main objective for me today was to stay in DRS and then to manage the tyres once I was below one second to the car ahead. But I did well today.”

“This was the main debate in my mind for the whole race, whether to push or be in the DRS to save tyres,” David said. “The first half of the race, I was just managing in the DRS and afterwards was definitely saving tyres because I had a bit of a gap to the Trident. [Towards] the end of the race, [I] wasn’t pushing too hard because everyone was in the DRS and it was quite hard to defend. It was just doing as much as possible to get good exits, not stress the tyre too much because once one person gets ahead of me, it’s going to start a chain reaction. I was just doing a bit of both.

“Pretty much the last three laps I was pushing as much as I can to stay ahead, especially for the corners going on to the DRS zones, Turn 4 and Turn 14 – just doing as much as possible to get a good exit so they wouldn’t get the run down. It was pretty tough because the tyre wear was quite high as we know at Silverstone, but [I] managed in the end.

Further back in the pack, the Trident pair of De Palo and Strømsted finished fourth and fifth respectively, with De Palo making up four places from where he started in eighth. Gładysz came across the line in sixth ahead of tomorrow’s polesitter Freddie Slater, who helped Trident secure their first triple points score of the year. Sharp, McLaughlin and Wharton rounded out the points-paying positions, the last of those dropping from a starting position of fourth. Giusti fell even further from his third-place grid spot to finish 11th.

All 30 drivers finished the race on the lead lap.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency