After multiple delays due to conditions being simply not raceable Lorenzo Colombo was in a league of his own compared to the other drivers dominating the race and after his last race win was taken away from him by the Stewards will celebrate this one as his first in FIA Formula 3 and will no doubt be hoping that this won’t be his last trip to the top of the podium.
In a shortened fifteen lap race of which three of those were under the safety car it is not often you see a driver win by 13.4 seconds but this was the case for Lorenzo Colombo who’s win was never in doubt ahead of Jack Crawford who dealt well with the pressure he was put under by Roman Stanek who himself finished on the final step of the podium.
After several attempts at getting the race started which included a suspended race start before setting out again for a few laps to assess the conditions, even under Safety Car conditions Colombo was ready to go almost ‘tailgating’ the Safety Car and once under Green Flag conditions the Italian driver got a brilliant restart and managed to find the places on the track where the most grip could be found.
In a race that perhaps surprisingly had a small number of incidents it was the MP Motorsport Duo of Caio Collet and Victor Martins who were making all the moves, Collet being immensely brave at one point going round cars on the grass on the Kemmel Straight but unfortunately for the Brazilian had passed these cars off the track and was duly handed a five second penalty plunging the Alpine junior from fourth to fifth.
HWA RACELAB’s Rafael Villagomez found out the hard way how tricky these conditions can be running into the wall at Les Combes and briefly bringing out the yellow flag but thankfully managed to get the car going.
There were two non-finishing drivers in Ido Cohen who retired after contact and Filip Ugran who started from the pit-lane and only managed to compete one lap which was behind the safety car.
After doing so well holding up numerous cars to attempt to keep his fourth position – Jonathan Hoggard will be disappointed to have run wide and effectively let Vesti, Martins and Collet through despite the latter having a five second penalty demoting him to behind Hoggard.
With his championship rivals Jack Doohan, Olli Caldwell and Dennis Hauger outside of the points scoring positions Frederik Vesti made the most of this, moving up several positions to finish in a fourth position which he will no doubt be delighted with.
For this afternoons race it will be Sunday’s pole-sitter Jack Doohan lining up on Pole position and will have the Trident of David Schumacher for company alongside him on the front row after the German fell down the order in the latter part of the first race.
Race two is set to start at 17:55 local time but with delays already after the first Formula 3 race there is a chance that the race could be starting slightly later than originally planned.
Full Race 1 Results
Position Name Interval
| 1 | Colombo | |
| 2 | Crawford | 13.4 |
| 3 | Stanek | 15.4 |
| 4 | Vesti | 19 |
| 5 | Martins | 21.1 |
| 6 | Hoggard | 23.6 |
| 7 | Novalek | 24.4 |
| 8 | Sargeant | 24.5 |
| 9 | Collet | 25.2 |
| 10 | Smolyar | 25.4 |
| 11 | Schumacher | 25.9 |
| 12 | Doohan | 26.9 |
| 13 | Leclerc | 28.3 |
| 14 | Hauger | 30.0 |
| 15 | Iwasa | 31.4 |
| 16 | Caldwell | 44.3 |
| 17 | Cordeel | 46.4 |
| 18 | Yeany | 50.7 |
| 19 | Nannini | 53.4 |
| 20 | Rasmussen | 57.0 |
| 21 | Edgar | 57.6 |
| 22 | Correa | 58.4 |
| 23 | Van Der Helm | 59.1 |
| 24 | Williams | 60.6 |
| 25 | Tóth | 64.8 |
| 26 | Chovanec | 68.4 |
| 27 | Vollagómez | 132.6 |
| 28 | Ugran | Ret |
| 29 | Cohen | Ret |
