Photos: Eurocup-3
The results of both Eurocup-3 races at Barcelona last weekend are being appealed, with a potentially premature crowning followed by off-track drama that has put a lot back on the line, and into limbo
When the chequered flag waved on last Sunday’s season-ending Eurocup-3 race at Barcelona, MP Motorsport driver Javier Sagrera was provisionally declared as the champion when he crossed the line in fifth place. His title rival Christian Ho, who drives for Campos Racing, had won the race but come two points shy of taking the crown.
Except Ho finished the race knowing he remained in title contention, of sorts, since his team was appealing the results of the previous day’s race.
In that encounter Ho had finished second, sitting around 0.9 seconds behind MP’s Emmo Fittipaldi for the first half of its duration then ramping up the pressure later on as the pair extracted more pace out of their tyres than anyone else.
On lap 16 of 20, Ho dived down the inside of Fittipaldi at turn one and got ahead. Fittipaldi tried staying alongside but went off, and after rejoining via the designated escape road he swept around the outside of Ho at turn three to get back ahead.
He brought his gap back up to 0.9s after that, and once the race-winning moment was reviewed there was no further action taken by the stewards and it was confirmed several hours after the finish that Fittipaldi was victorious. Campos moved quickly to lodge an appeal against that decision, which the two title contenders were aware of as they raced the next day.
A penalty of any kind applied to Fittipaldi would have meant a seven-point swing in Ho’s favour, which at the time of the chequered flag on Sunday would have been more than enough for Ho to take the title from Sagrera.
Ahead of race two, MP’s Owen Tangavelou was handed a five-place grid penalty for setting his fastest lap in qualifying under yellow flag conditions, moving Sagrera up to fifth while Ho started on pole.
Ho moved across at the start to keep Fittipaldi at bay, while Sagrera got involved in a four-wide fight for third down to the first turn. Sainteloc Racing’s Daniel Nogales passed him around the outside before the apex of the corner, and as Sagrera turned in he dropped behind Campos’s Valentin Kluss and Drivex School’s Nikita Bedrin who were to the inside of him.
Sagrera went off, and was one of nine drivers who made their way up to turn three by using the designated escape road which enables drivers to filter back into the pack without issue. He rejoined behind Nogales, but ahead of Kluss and Bedrin.
After passing Kluss himself, Bedrin went to Sagrera’s outside to turn five and he managed to move past him at turn six.
At the end of the first lap there was a third of a second between Sagrera and Kluss, and he weaved down the pit straight in an attempt to break the tow to his chasing rival.
Kluss still had the benefit of Sagrera’s slipstream until lap six, meaning they were close enough to swap positions if it had been required, but race control did not put Sagrera under investigation for his pass on Kluss while the race was on.
Sagrera therefore kept his focus on trying to pursue Nogales, who had lost third to Bedrin, while in the race’s second half Kluss lost out to GRS Team’s Mari Boya, Tangavelou and Campos’s Jesse Carrasquedo Jr.
When the race ended, only the appeal of the race one result was on either title contender’s minds and Eurocup-3 instigated its title celebrations with Sagrera the recipient of the crown.
The title picture got a bit messier after that…
“I just wanted to go over the last few hours and all the situations that we’ve been put through in the last few hours,” said Ho in a video posted to Instagram last night, which is so far the only public acknowledgement of what occurred post-race.
“Firstly I want to thank the team for all the work that they’ve put in on and off the track. More off the track I’d say this time, to try and fix the situation that we’ve been put in. So I’ll go over it very briefly.
“Yesterday I qualified P2. And that was all reasonable. I think it was very fair, I didn’t the drive the best. But then for the race, we knew we had a really good car. And in the end we finished P2. I overtook the guy into the first chicane on the [16th] lap, and I was fully ahead, and he cut the entire track. He didn’t get a penalty for that. We are appealing that right now, and it’s still under investigation. But to be honest I think we’ve seen it a lot of times the past few years in Formula 3, or in other categories, and it’s all been given as a penalty. So I don’t see why it’s not been given now. And like I said, I’ll give it to the stewards to decide, and it’s still being appealed.
“Today was I wouldn’t say a much smoother day. On-track, it was much smoother: I got pole and I won the race with the fastest lap. So everything went smoothly there. But still, some stuff happened off the track again that I would say has been quite contradictory. Because a driver from their own team got disqualified from their own mechanics’ mistake [after] parc ferme, and coincidentally at the same time my championship rival got a five-second penalty. And that same driver who got disqualified was right behind that guy. And if he didn’t get disqualified, I would have won the championship by now.
“So yeah, very, very strange to have stuff decided like this off the track rather than on the track. Everything is still up for appeal.”
He added: “I feel like this is quite a weird way to end the championship. You can’t see much on YouTube or on the streams, or on the results, because everything seems so smooth. But trust me, a lot has been happening off the track and it’s been quite stressful, to be honest. Because I’ve had to stay at the track for three or four hours after the race has happened, just because they’ve been protesting stuff and things have not been – I don’t know, it’s just been really weird.
“I don’t like to see a championship end like this, because I think the last two years have been quite tough on us as a team, mentally. And just so many things have happened, and we don’t know if it’s our fault or their fault or anybody’s fault.
“But I just hope this can be resolved, because I think this will help the championship a lot to grow. Because we need more consistency in racing, and it’s just not been happening. So thank you to everybody, and I hope you have a good day.”
Post-race, Sagrera was summoned to the stewards over his off-the-track pass on Kluss, which he then stated he wasn’t aware of during the race. After reviewing the evidence available, the stewards decided to penalise him five seconds. The decision document [number 28] did not state at what time Sagrera was summoned but was published at 17:06 local time.
The MP team had another trip to the stewards, following a report from the clerk of the course, after members of its squad breached parc ferme regulations on Tangavelou’s car. It led to him being disqualified from seventh place. That was confirmed in a decision document [number 30] that was published at 14:45 local time. It too omitted further info on timing.
Without Tangavelou’s disqualification, Sagrera’s penalty would have dropped him two places in the race classification, cost him two points (with Boya in sixth being a non-scoring guest driver) and cost him the title to Ho on victory countback.
With Tangavelou’s disqualification applied, he instead moved down one spot, with no points loss, and remained champion pending the hearing of the appeal of race one’s results.
Adrian Campos Jr, team principal of his family’s eponymous racing operation, confirmed to Formula Scout that not only was the race one appeal made by Campos, but that the team had filed further intents of appeal and protests following race two.
It protested against the disqualification of Tangavelou, arguing there had been ‘fraud of law’ when members of the title-winning driver’s team had broken parc ferme regulations.
There was nothing the team could achieve by attending to a car following the final race of the season – it was certainly not pressured for time if it sought to make it race-ready for the next weekend of competitive Eurocup-3 action in 2025 – and it knew the only possible outcome was disqualification. That this action led to another of the team’s drivers provisionally keeping hold of the title, Campos argued, indicated foul play.
This situation rumbled on into Sunday evening, during which time Campos lodged an intent of appeal, with the appeal itself to be lodged immently from Formula Scout’s understanding due to the 96-hour window that submissions have to be made in.
RFEDA, the Spanish motorsport federation, will be hosting hearings of the appeals at a later date that will be communicated once the appeals are registered. Should the involved parties dispute the decisions made then, the FIA’s international court would be where the 2024 Eurocup-3 title is then decided.
Eurocup-3 released an official statement saying it no longer had a declared champion at 15:30 local time on Monday.
Reporting by Alejandro Alonso Lopez and Ida Wood