Home Featured Joel Eriksson wins Hungaroring finale to regain European F3 lead

Joel Eriksson wins Hungaroring finale to regain European F3 lead

by Peter Allen

Eriksson

Joel Eriksson won the third and final race of the weekend at the Hungaroring to reclaim the lead of the Formula 3 European Championship.

Starting on pole position, the Motopark driver kept the lead at the start ahead of Callum Ilott, and led by nearly a second at the end of lap one.

After Ilott kept the gap at just over one second in the early stages, Eriksson then doubled his advantage in the middle of the race.

With five minutes left, the Briton?briefly cut the gap back underneath two seconds, but the Swede showed he had speed in hand by pulling a three-second gap, before winning by 1.8s.

Having fallen 22?points adrift when he finished 10th in race one from the back of the grid, Eriksson now leads the standings by five points over Maximilian Gunther, who finished sixth for the second race in a row.

Eriksson, who keeps up his record of winning once at each round so far this year, is 21 points ahead of?Ilott and 28 in front of?Norris, who finished fourth after losing out to Guan Yu Zhou at the start.

He did get back alongside the Chinese Ferrari protege into the chicane on the penultimate lap, but Zhou cut the corner and kept hold of a second straight third-placed finish, which moves him to the head of the ‘best of the rest’ fight for fifth in the standings.

David Beckmann completed his first weekend with Motopark with a second fifth-place finish after keeping Gunther at bay once more.

Jake Hughes was also close behind in seventh, while Joey Mawson held off Jehan Daruvala for the second race in a row for eighth, after the Indian jumped Nikita Mazepin at the start.