Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Paul Aron earned his maiden FIA Formula 3 victory in the Red Bull Ring sprint race, coming on top of a three-way battle with Pepe Marti and Gabriele Mini.
The Prema driver started eighth and reached the lead with less than three laps to go of the 20-lap race in what he described as a “super respectful” battle.
“Lap 18, I didn’t even know which lap it was. My engineer [Simone Bechini] kept giving me the pace and I told him just give me the laps, give me the laps to go,” he recalled of his radio activity as he put pressure on Campos Racing’s Marti, who struggled for traction out of the corners in the second half of the race and eventually finished sixth.
“After the safety car restart, I think everybody’s tyres reset a bit. So the advantage I had before was kind of equalled for the first few laps. And my restart wasn’t so good. I think I didn’t keep the tyres in temperature enough for the restart. So I struggled a bit.
“But then once I got the pace back up, I was starting to catch Pepe again. And I already knew before the restart that we had the pace advantage. And then the fighting kept going. I thought I was gonna be able to make the move easily, but it turned out not to be so easy and we were side-by-side for many corners in a row.
“Finally out of turn one, we were three-wide going into turn three. I had pretty good positioning because I was in the middle of the racing line, so I could brake quite late. And I have to say to the other competitors thank you because everybody was super respectful. That’s why we were able to make the corner.
“But in the end, I came out in the lead and I was able to pull away with the good pace we had.”
Hitech GP driver Mini was challenging Aron for the lead in the closing stages, and he finished 1.469 seconds behind in second place.
“I did a really good safety car restart, so I tried to attack Paul. I didn’t manage to, I managed to stay close to him and when he tried to attack Pepe, I just stayed on my line and then tried to go on the inside,” Mini recalled.
“We were three-wide. I just tried to do the shortest line as possible to get also good traction on exit. Of course, that’s not the ideal line. So I just did that to avoid crashing with Paul.
“In the end, I managed to gain a position and stay close to Paul and maybe I could have tried a move, but it was too risky.”