F3 Great Britain: Sargeant controls feature race for first F3 win

Prema’s Logan Sargeant took his first Formula 3 win in the Silverstone feature race, controlling from the front after breaking away early.

Sargeant got a good launch from pole position to hold the lead into the first corner. Behind him, second-placed starter Liam Lawson was slow away and was passed by Jake Hughes starting from third.

While Hughes was occupied with getting past Lawson, Sargeant immediately set about opening a gap in front. By lap 7 the American was already 2.5 seconds ahead of Hughes, and managed to maintain the same distance for the majority of the race.

The gap only increased in the closing stages as Hughes’ tyres started to lose grip, with Sargeant running more than three seconds clear in the final four laps. Hughes eventually fell back to within half a second of Lawson, although he just managed to hold off the Hitech to take his first podium of the year in second.

Lawson crossed the line in third, having held the position throughout a race-long battle with Frederik Vesti. Lawson appeared to struggle with his tyres all through the race and after the opening laps a train was already forming behind him including Vesti, Theo Pourchaire, David Beckmann and Bent Viscaal.

But despite Vesti’s pace advantage, Lawson was able to successfully defend against the Dane’s attempts at overtaking him. The time lost trying to pass Lawson then left Vesti vulnerable to Pourchaire behind, and on lap 9 the Frenchman tried a move through Vale. Pourchaire briefly got ahead into fourth, but Vesti was able to retake the place and Pourchaire ended up losing out to Beckmann as well.

After being told by his engineer to get after Lawson and commit to a move, Vesti set successive fastest laps and caught the Hitech again in the second half of the race. However, he was still unable to make a move stick and had to settle for fourth ahead of Beckmann.

Pourchaire finished sixth in the end, just holding off Oscar Piastri through the final corners with help from yellow flags for a collision between Sebastian Fernandez and Matteo Nannini at the back of the field. Piastri managed to recover back into the points after trouble in qualifying yesterday, although he ran out of laps to make the most of a late-race turn of speed.

Viscaal finished in eighth place, with Clement Novalak ninth and Lirim Zendelli taking reverse grid pole for tomorrow in tenth. Lawson scored the additional two points for fastest lap.

Sargeant’s victory and Piastri’s finish in the lower half of the points means Sargeant now takes over the lead of the championship by six points from his teammate.

Update: Novalak received a post-race five-second penalty for running off track and gaining an advantage, dropping him out of the points to P13. Zendelli was promoted to P9 and Ben Barnicoat to P10 for his first point of the season and reverse grid pole. Nannini also received a grid penalty for tomorrow’s sprint race for hitting Fernandez.

Full race result:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Points
1	Logan Sargeant	Prema Racing	25
2	Jake Hughes	HWA Racelab	18
3	Liam Lawson (FL)	Hitech Grand Prix	17
4	Frederik Vesti	Prema Racing	12
5	David Beckmann	Trident	10
6	Theo Pourchaire	ART Grand Prix	8
7	Oscar Piastri	Prema Racing	6
8	Bent Viscaal	MP Motorsport	4
9	Lirim Zendelli	Trident	2
10	Ben Barnicoat	Carlin Buzz Racing	1
11	Cameron Das	Carlin Buzz Racing
12	Aleksandr Smolyar	ART Grand Prix
13	Clement Novalak	Carlin Buzz Racing
14	Alex Peroni	Campos Racing
15	David Schumacher	Charouz Racing System
16	Max Fewtrell	Hitech Grand Prix
17	Enzo Fittipaldi	HWA Racelab
18	Igor Fraga	Charouz Racing System
19	Richard Verschoor	MP Motorsport
20	Sophia Floersch	Campos Racing
21	Olli Caldwell	Trident
22	Roman Stanek	Charouz Racing System
23	Lukas Dunner	MP Motorsport
24	Sebastian Fernandez	ART Grand Prix
25	Alessio Deledda	Campos Racing
26	Jack Doohan	HWA Racelab
Ret.	Matteo Nannini	Jenzer Motorsport
Ret.	Calan Williams	Jenzer Motorsport
Ret.	Federico Malvestiti	Jenzer Motosport
Ret.	Dennis Hauger	Hitech Grand Prix