Strømsted takes maiden win in Spa F3 Sprint Race

Written by Morgan Holiday

Credit: Formula 3

Trident's Noah Strømsted came out on top in an incident-free Sprint Race at Spa-Franchorchamps, securing his first race win in Formula 3.

Ugo Ugochukwu and Charlie Wurz both improved on their starting positions to round out the podium, both drivers taking their maiden podiums in the category.

How it happened

Back for his second weekend of Formula 3, this time with Hitech TGR, it was Freddie Slater who started from reverse grid pole position.

At the start of the race Slater held the lead from Noah Strømsted, and behind then Bruno Del Pino and Wurz grappled for third. The 30-car field kept it clean and avoided incident in the opening laps, drivers working hard to cleanly overtake each other.

A driver making moves early on was McLaren junior Ugochukwu as the young American driver jumped from seventh to third in the first four laps. Further down the field, Campos Racing's Mari Boya was also making moves. The driver sitting fourth in the standings had qualified a lowly 16th, but within the first half of the race improved up to 10th place.

On Lap 3 Strømsted made his move and took the lead from Slater, also grabbing the fastest lap of the race so far in the process. The field settled down a little, as the Danish driver was able to pull over a two second gap to Slater, who was left to battle with Ugochukwu for second place. It was a position Ugochukwu was able to gain on Lap 7, and by the time he was up to second Strømsted was over three seconds ahead of the rest of the field.

In contrast to the drivers making moves, Sunday's polesitter Brad Benavides was slowly slipping down from 12th, and with four laps to go he had dropped down to 19th.

In a scrap with Nikola Tsolov, Slater's misfortune continued and he dropped from what was then fourth place to seventh, now struggling to hold onto a points-paying position for the final few laps. Boya moved up to eighth on Lap 10 of 12, promoting all three Campos Racing cars into the points as things stood. But soon after he received a five-second time penalty for track limits, which would drop him down the order at the end of the race.

On the final lap, Stenshorne, Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Boya all put up a good fight for sixth place, Inthraphuvasak coming out on top. But out in front it was Trident's Strømsted, six seconds in front of his closest rival, who came home to take his first Formula 3 win and securing his third podium of the season on top of it.

Ugochukwu took second place for PREMA Racing ahead of Strømsted's trident teammate, Wurz. Tsolov secured fourth, with championship leader Rafael Câmara rounding out the top five.

Inthraphuvasak, Stenshorne and Del Pino were the final points-scorers of the day, Brando Badoer and Slater just missing out in ninth and 10th. Boya, post-penalty, slipped down to 15th as he crossed the line.