Arvid Lindblad storms to win his debut F3 race in Bahrain

Photo: Red Bull

Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad charged to victory in his first ever Formula 3 race in the season-opening sprint encounter in Bahrain.

Prema driver Lindblad started fourth on the reversed grid and lost a place to Tim Tramnitz on the first lap, but managed to regain the place soon afterwards when he braked late into turn 1 trying to keep Leonardo Fornaroli at bay.

ART Grand Prix duo Laurens van Hoepen and Nikola Tsolov shared the front row of the grid, and Alpine junior Tsolov claimed the lead through the opening corners but would not be able to pull away.

Van Hoepen got back ahead into the first corner on lap four, but the pair went side-by-side through the middle of the lap and Tsolov emerged back in front. That would effectively be repeated on lap 11 of 19, by which point both Lindblad and Fornaroli had passed Max Esterson and caught the ART pair.

Lindblad attacked van Hoepen into turn 1 on the next lap, and was gifted second place when van Hoepen ran wide in turn 11 on the following tour.

With five laps to run, Lindblad got down the inside of Tsolov, who was almost forced off track as he successfully fought back. A lap later, the 16-year-old would take the lead for good.

Van Hoepen would once more challenge Tsolov, who this time went all the way off track and couldn’t regain the place. He would fall to fourth, with van Hoepen just holding off Fornaroli at the line by 0.036 seconds.

Behind fifth-placed Tramnitz, it was even closer between Esterson and Gabriele Mini, who came on strong at the end from 10th on the grid and missed out on sixth place by only 0.004s.

After topping Thursday’s qualifying, Mini’s Prema team-mate Dino Beganovic had a race to forget, tagging Santiago Ramos into a spin at the first corner, picking up a puncture and a 10-second penalty as he trailed in last.

Luke Browning, who will start Saturday’s feature race alongside Beganovic on the front row, was also handed a time penalty. He pulled off a stunning double pass on Sami Meguetounif and Christian Mansell to move up to seventh on lap six, but the stewards were less impressed, who judged he gained an advantage off track in completing the move at turn 4. This demoted him from ninth to 15th at the finish.

Race results (19 laps)