Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Arvid Lindblad celebrated victory two days in a row at Silverstone, with his feature race win lifting him to second in FIA Formula 3’s standings.
The Prema driver was set to start 10th on the grid, but switching to slick tyres after the formation lap put him down the order and he ended lap one in 20th. He was sixth two laps later, and progressed to third before the changing weather sent him all the way down to 22nd.
It took three laps of green flag action to return to sixth, and a lap later he was second. Lindblad inherited victory when Rodin Motorsport’s Callum Voisin on-the-road winner got a time penalty, and called winning twice on home soil “crazy and something I could never even dream of”.
“What a race, and what a result! No words, the conditions were changing all the time, but we got it right. We stuck to the slicks and it paid off in the end. To do the double here in Silverstone is amazing, and I definitely didn’t expect it when I woke up,” said Lindblad after winning.
“I’m over the moon, I don’t think I have been this happy in a long time. The race was so crazy, I don’t really have any words to describe it. It was changing a lot. I think slicks and wets changed between being the best tyre five or six different times during that race.
“It was so strange, we had a massive advantage at one point and then it was so sketchy and it was just about surviving and staying on track. As soon as the safety car came in at the end, I had a massive delta and were able to pass all the wet runners.”
He added: “I backed myself and the tyre pretty early on. Already from when we mounted the wets on the grid, I didn’t think it was the right call but I was told there was a lot of rain coming so we stuck with it. Then at the end of the formation lap, I told my engineer that there was barely any rain and it was not doing anything to the track so we took a risk to box. Then on the slicks I new almost immediately that I was quicker than the wet runners, even when it was drizzly. We had quite a few safety car interventions which I think helped us out a lot because when the track was at its wettest we basically didn’t lose any time.”
Lindblad said even “when I was in P20 I still thought it was the right tyre” due to the track rapidly drying, and learning of Voisin’s penalty with a few laps to go “definitely calmed me down a bit”.
“The mentality shift when from attacking Callum to just keeping it clean and tidy enough that Gabriele Mini didn’t pass me,” he explained.
Although Lindblad beat team-mate Mini to victory, the latter moved into the championship lead by six points.