F3 | Austria: Browning wins Feature Race and returns to lead

It’s a weekend that smiles on Luke Browning, the Austrian Formula 3 driver. The British driver, in fact, not only won Sunday’s Feature Race, but also regained the lead of the standings, bringing his lead over Gabriele Minì to 11 points.

The Italian, after the double zero in Spain, immediately recovered, scoring points in both races, including a nice podium in the Sunday race. Behind them it was a weekend with few points for the previous championship leader, Fornaroli, who finished with a ninth place in the Sunday race.

Nikola Tsolov won Saturday’s sprint race, making the most of the inverted grid to score his second win this season.

Sprint Race: Tsolov takes advantage of the inverted grid

The Sprint Race saw the success of Nikola Tsolov (ART), who added the victory in the short race on Saturday in Austria to his previous triumph in Monaco, also in this case taking advantage of the reversed grid.

Starting from pole, Stenshorne immediately ceded the lead to Mansell with a less than ideal start. After attempting to regain the position at Turn 4, however, things took a turn for the worse when Tsolov’s second ART went around the outside of that section, relegating the Norwegian to third.

Before the opening lap ended, however, the Safety Car was called into action which immediately regrouped the group: the stewards took to the track to recover the MP Motorsport car of Kacper Sztuka, forced to retire after an accident which involved Charlie Wurz (Jenzer) and Joseph Loake (Rodin).

The interruption also gave Dino Beganovic, one of the title hopefuls, the opportunity to return to the back of the group after a spin in turn 1, which at that moment had caused him to drop from the starting eighth position. Since the restart, the group has often remained compact, forming a long DRS train, making it difficult to overtake as most of the pilots provide the moving wing and slipstream to each other.

Up front, however, there was no shortage of duels, with Mansell and Tsolov battling for the lead with overtaking and counter-overtaking, especially in turns 3 and 4, the classic points where it is possible to attempt an attack on the Red Bull Ring. In the following moments, Stenshorne also took advantage of the situation and found a way past Mansell to gain the second step of the podium.

However, the race was interrupted by the safety car for the second time after Sebastian Montoya hit the wall violently before braking for Turn 4 in a duel with Alex Dunne: his Campos then returned to the middle of the track, fortunately without serious consequences.

With just one lap of the shootout still to go, Tsolov led the group to the finish line with the top positions unchanged: Martinius Stenshorne and Christian Mansell took the podium, followed by Alex Dunne, Laurens Van Hoepen, Gabriele Minì, Oliver Goethe, Tim Tramnitz, Noel Leon and Sami Meguetounif finished in the points.

Luke Browning, Hitech Pulse-Eight

Photo credit: Mark Sutton

Feature Race: Browning Returns to Victory

Luke Browning took his second Formula 3 win of the season and moved back to the top of the standings with victory in the Austrian race.

After a good start, Browning pulled away, while third-placed Tim Tramnitz made a slow start, being passed by several cars. This allowed the Prema trio of Arvid Lindblad, Gabriele Mini and Dino Beganovic to line up behind Browning, although the Briton did not make it to the finish line after contact with MP Motorsport’s Alex Dunne on lap eight forced him to retire. Dunne was given a penalty for his move.

But it was in the final laps that an already exciting race reached its climax, with the battle for second place taking center stage. At the end of lap 21, Beganovic demonstrated how hard he had to push to keep up with Browning, losing the rear: an episode that allowed the race leader to have a few tenths of an extra margin by the end of the race.

Three laps from the checkered flag, the battle intensified with Mini attempting to overtake Beganovic, with a battle that continued in the following laps, until the penultimate lap. In that moment, in fact, Mini managed to attack Beganovic, completing the overtaking between turns 4 and 6. But everything changed again during the last lap, when using the DRS, the FDA Swede regained second position in turn 3: this opened another duel, which however was in favor of the Italian, who responded by going to the outside of turn 4 and then completing the counter-overtaking with a beautiful maneuver on the inside of turn 6.

All these late battles allowed Browning to extend his lead and win by 1.6 seconds, returning to the top step of the podium. After a fierce race, Mini and Beganovic completed the podium, with Mansell in fourth after completing a fine comeback from the sixth row. The Italian is now second in the championship, 11 points behind the Briton.