F3 Sprint: A Day of Chaos, Contact, and Crumbling Tyres at Bahrain
- Trisha Lynnette Nathan
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Written by Trisha Lynnette
Formula 3 Sprint Race took place on Friday at 13:15 PM Bahrain time. With Nikola Tsolov of Campos Racing taking the win, followed by debutant, Freddie Slater of AIX Racing and Tuukka Taponen of ART Grand Prix, here is a brief recap on the sprint for Round 2 in Sakhir.
It's Saturday afternoon and all teams were lined up for the much anticipated sprint race at Sakhir. Immediately an incident involving Bruno Del Pino of MP Motorsport was noted by the stewards for starting procedure infringement. This resulted in Del Pino, who was 8th on the starting grid, to start from the pit lane.
Its lights off and away we go. Rafael Câmara, our championship leader, stalls at the back of the grid while Dufek has a good start. Freddie Slater, the debutant, also has a good start off the line. Nikola Tsolov of Campos Racing jumped to fourth getting a good grip on the track. Freddie Slater, driving for AIX Racing this weekend, overtakes Martinius Stenshorne of Hitech TGR, almost oversteering and falling into the gravel trap in the process.
While it was a pretty clean start for most, overtakes did happen within the first lap. Immediately changing the grid order. Del Pino, who had started from the pit lane was now 29th, followed by Câmara who was behind the medical car at one point in the lap.
In Lap 2, Callum Voisin of Rodin Motorsport takes over Noah Strømsted of Trident, Christian Ho of DAMS Lucas Oil Racing falls down to 9th and DRS was made available to the drivers. Turn 1, 4 and 11 were the DRS Zones at the track. In the race a lot of the drivers went wide at Turn 4 and ended up in the gravel. In the meantime Slater overtook Joshua Dufek of Hitech TGR and was now the new race leader. Tsolov also managed to jump to P3 in the race, becoming a threat for the vulnerable Dufek.
Nicola Lacorte of DAMS Lucas Oil reported a puncture in the first few laps of the race, causing him to enter the pit lane and fall down a few places. Even Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak of Campos Racing and Nicola Marinangeli of AIX racing had reported a puncture in their tire and entered the pit. While Lacorte and Inthraphuvasak went back on track, Marinangeli inevitably retired.
In the meantime, Ugo Ugochukwu and Brando Badoer of Prema Racing collided on track. This unfortunately leads to Ugochukwu retiring from the race and Badoer to fall down the grid along with a puncture in his tire. The collision was noted by stewards but would only be decided after the race. Ugochukwu was given a ten second penalty which meant a 5 grid place drop for today’s feature and 2 points given to Badoer.
This brought out the first safety car on track, which meant that Slater was now under pressure from the drivers behind him as the gap grew smaller. Slater led the pack followed by Dufek and Tsolov. The stewards noted the collision between Strømsted and Inthraphuvasak which had caused the puncture for the latter earlier.
It's Lap 6 and the wind has been swirling around, which helped the drivers with DRS. The safety car came to an end and we were back racing on track. Tsolov was able to overtake Dufek in Lap 6, bringing him to second. He then set his aim on Slater who skill-fully defended with all his might. Tsolov reduces the gap, bringing pressure onto Slater.
At the back of the grid, Roman Biliński of Rodin Motorsport was called in for a front wing change. He entered the pit lane, changed his front wing and then went back on track. Câmara also climbs up to 21st. In the meantime Tuukka Taponen of ART Grand Prix, goes to the outside of Stenshorne, trying to overtake the driver to get a podium for the team.
At the front, Tsolov and Slater continue battling it out for the lead. The two drivers kept interchanging the lead as one overtook the other at every turn. However at one point, Tsolov overtook a crucial turn which made him the leader for the race and he slowly increased the gap between the two.
After the lead is switched to Tsolov, he skilfully defends as Slater now goes offensive. Behind these two, Dufek and Stenshorne fight for third, while Taponen tries to overtake both - failing to do so.
At this point of the race we begin to see the ruthless tire degradation brought by the track. Tsolov reported that his front left tire is “falling” away due to the tire degradation. However this is the case for almost all drivers on the track.
Stenshorne and Giusti battled it out, the latter unable to overtake. Giusti was now vulnerable to Voisin who overtook him for 5th place. Théophile Naël of VAR and Javier Sagrera of AIX Racing collided, causing Naël to slow down and fall a few places. Sagrera was handed a penalty. Ivan Domingues of VAR and Dufek collide causing them both to halt and bring out the yellow flag.
Another safety car on track in Lap 16. This meant that drivers had only one perfect lap to overtake and finalise their positions in the race. Tsolov was under pressure now, all the drivers lined up behind him - including Slater who still had a fighting chance. Slater was informed by his engineer that Tsolov’s left tire was falling away, which highlighted his chance of an overtake.
The safety car ends and the drivers are back to racing. Slater tries his best to overtake Tsolov, but the Bulgarian driver manages to defend well. The last lap took place and the gap between Tsolov and Slater meant that there was no chance of switching.
Tsolov is the first to cross the line and he wins the Sakhir Sprint Race. Slater, the debutant for the day, placed second followed by Taponen in third. A truly memorable race for all three drivers as they crossed the line with a podium awaiting them on the other side.
The race was truly eventful having faced collisions, retirements, safety cars and constant change of race leaders.
However the sprint race truly showed the high temperatures faced in Sakhir. During the race Tsolov had radioed “Man it’s very hot and I’m very thirsty man” highlighting the extreme temperatures faced by not only the tires but the athletes as well. Viewers also got to see a fun response from his engineer - “Come on mate you’re the lion!”
In a press conference attended by DIVEBOMB, Tsolov, Slater and Taponen highlighted how hot it truly was. Viewers were able to understand the level of heat by the tire degradation of the top 3. The tires were completely worn down.
“It was way too hot but I managed to hold on and the safety cars made us cool down a little bit during the race so, pretty happy.” Tsolov mentioned, highlighting the extreme heat faced by them on track.
“I think it was more complicated than overtaking the other, Freddie was defending really well making some switchback moves which made my life more difficult and then I was trying to get in front as I think clean are was going to help me a bit and finally made it stick after a few tries.” Tsolov continued, brushing on how the fight with Slater at the front didn’t really help with the extreme heat faced in green flag racing.
“We were having to race but also manage the tires, the track was super dirty and super hot so all the worse things for drivers. But we managed it well and had a good battle out there.” Slater stated, mentioning how these weren’t ideal conditions for racing but they made the best out of it.
“It was definitely more than in the test we had. I managed it quite well and tomorrow will be more with a few more laps and if there is no safety car it will be quite tough in the end.” Taponen highlighted, mentioning tomorrow's race conditions.
One thing that viewers could notice on track was the team communication. Radios of drivers were played, showing the vitality of the team engineers. Whether it be the information filled radio of Slater or fun filled radio of Tsolov, how important is that team communication? And how much of today's win can be attributed to that?
“I didn’t get so much information which I kind of like because I like to focus by myself. I like the engineer to be quiet and give few important advice and information, what we planned before the race. Definitely it helps me but I don't want him to talk too much.” stated Taponen, highlighting both the importance of communication and his personal preference.
“Jumping in a new team, it's quite hard to get the engineer and the driver relationship quite good straight away so actually through the race it was a kind of radio communication where I was asking for a little bit less information.
I was just focusing on what I was doing at that time of the race and managing what was happening front and behind. It is super important, the information you're getting and I got some really good information to pounce at the right time and manage at different points and yeah also some good encouragement out there which is always nice.” answered Slater, pointing out the slight cons faced for being new to a team.
“Yeah, for me I think it was a little bit different. Because I have a close relationship with my engineer. We worked together a few years ago in F4 so we have been quite close as friends so I like to get him involved and we actually think about topics and decisions together,
which I think helps a lot because the more the better. You kind of just maximize everything. I like someone to tell me information every lap otherwise I just get too focused and blackout.” mentioned Tsolov, clearly highlighting the playful friendship the duo have, as seen by the radio snippet in the race.
We are set for the Feature Race on Saturday at 12:55 P.M. Bahrain Time where we will see Câmara lead the pack for the race.
Make sure to catch the sprint live and if you can’t, don’t worry! Head back over to DIVEBOMB for all the action you might’ve missed.
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