Prema’s Oliver Bearman crossed the line first for his first win in Formula 3, in a sprint race that saw six drivers fail to finish.
In contrast to yesterday’s qualifying session, the sprint race began with a completely dry track.
Zak O’Sullivan started the race on the reverse grid pole, with Juan Manuel Correa behind him in second. As the five lights went out and the sprint race got underway, O’Sullivan started well and got away from Correa in the ART GP car.
However, later on in lap one, Correa attempted a move on O’Sullivan for the lead and the two made contact, leaving the American with a puncture, which caused him to fall all the way down the order.
O’Sullivan also came away from the incident with damage, a broken front wing meant the Brit also fell down the order and the safety car was promptly deployed.
Just before the safety car was brought out, Oliver Bearman was able to get his Prema up to first place using the slip stream of the helpless Benavides.
On lap 6, Bearman got racing underway again as the safety car pulled into the pit lane. Bearman retained his lead and Edgar swept past Benavides up into second place.
However in the fight for P6, Oliver Goethe and Zane Maloney made contact and ran off into the gravel trap, where they had another heavy collision. Luckily both drivers were uninjured and managed to get out of their cars.
While the Trident and Campos racing cars were removed from the gravel, and the safety car was deployed, however after two laps under safety car, the session was red flagged and the drivers returned to the pit lane.
As the drivers made their way back to the pits, Bearman led the race, followed by Edgar and Benavides, with Smolyar and Staněk rounding out the top five.
When the race resumed with a rolling start Bearman quickly stormed away from Edgar in second, and sixth place William Alatolo lost places after he got some gravel.
On lap eleven, Brad Benavides was overtaken by Aleksandr Smolyar and Roman Staněk, leaving Smolyar in the final podium position and Benavides down in fifth.
As the race reached lap 13, Staněk got the best of Smolyar, putting him up to third, however both drivers finished the race with a podium to their name as Jonny Edgar’s time penalty demoted him to 5th.
When the checkered flag was waved, it would be Oliver Bearman who would take the Spa-Francochamps sprint race victory, finishing 4.7 seconds ahead of second place Staněk, whilst Aleksandr Smolyar had to settle for third.
Incredibly impressive recovery drives were made by three of the four championship leaders, as Prema’s Arthur Leclerc climbed from P20 to P5 and Red Bull Juniors Isack Hadjar and Jak Crawford made up 14 and 19 places respectively.
Joint championship leader coming into the weekend, Victor Martins experienced a difficult race, only being able to make up two places from twenty-fourth, leaving fellow frenchman Hadjar five points clear at the top of the F3 championship going into Sunday’s feature race.
