Campos’s Oliver Goethe sets the pace in red-flagged F3 practice at Imola

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Campos Racing’s Oliver Goethe was fastest in FIA Formula 3 Championship practice at Imola.

The 40-minute session started slightly late, and only a third of the 30-car field headed out at first. MP Motorsport’s Kacper Sztuka was the sole driver to actually set a laptime in the first five minutes, with Rodin Motorsport’s Joseph Loake next to do so.

A representative pace was not set until almost 10 minutes in, as Loake set a 1m36.795s. The track got a lot busier, with 22 drivers heading out and Prema’s Dino Beganovic going to the top with a 1m34.505s.

Soon flying laps were being set by others, and Beganovic and Loake were shuffled down to fourth and seventh. Beganovic’s team-mate Arvid Lindblad set a 1m33.784s to lead ART Grand Prix’s Christian Mansell by 0.258 seconds, with MP’s Alex Dunne going third fastest. Sztuka and Prema’s Gabriele Mini also bettered Loake who had improved his pace.

Hitech’s Martinius Stenshorne moved up to third with a 1m34.090s lap, then 14-and-a-half minutes in Beganovic set a 1m33.717s to return to to first place. At this point Campos’s drivers were still yet to set any laps.

There was briefly a Prema 1-2-3 as Mini and Lindblad moved ahead of Beganovic, then Mansell got within 0.138s of Mini’s 1m333.382s benchmark to sit in second place.

Campos’s trio put their first times on the board, but at an unrepresentative pace, then Sebastian Montoya’s first attempt at a flying lap ended by crashing out at the Variante Alta chicane. Red flags waved, and just before they did Jenzer Motorsport’s Charlie Wurz lowered the pace to 1m33.268s and ART GP’s Nikola Tsolov went second fastest with a lap just 0.004s slower.

Once the session restarted there was more change to the order, and Hitech’s Luke Browning – who had not set a flying lap before the stoppage – was on top by 0.554s with 10 minutes remaining.

He would not improve on his 1m32.367s lap, but it was near unbeatable. Goethe got within 0.092s of Browning’s benchmark with six minutes to go, then beat it by 0.32s. His team-mate Mari Boya was 0.581s behind in third, and Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli and Santiago Ramos demoted Wurz to sixth before session-ending red flags waved due to Rodin’s Piotr Wisnicki going off at the exit of Piratella.

Tsolov, Hitech’s Cian Shields and AIX Racing’s Nikita Bedrin had their fastest laps deleted post-session, dropping Tsolov from sixth to 13th and leaving Bedrin in last with no representativ laptimes to his name.

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