PREMA Racing put up a competitive pace today in qualifying for the Hungarian round of the FIA Formula 3 Championship. The team experienced a positive session, although the results were compromised by a late red flag.
Ollie Bearman posted a highly-valuable third place despite being at his first run at Hungaroring. The 17-year-old Brit ended up in P3, having been in contention for pole throughout the session. For Bearman, it was the second consecutive top-3 result in qualifying, and after converting it into a podium in Spielberg, the goal is to do it all again in Hungary.
Arthur Leclerc was highly-impressive as well as he stayed among the frontrunners for the whole session. Unfortunately, the Monegasque was among the most impacted by the red flag as he lost the chance to wrap up an extremely quick lap time with two corners to go. He will eventually start the feature race from P4.
Jak Crawford also lost the chance to make a crucial improvement and eventually had to settle for the seventh position proved to have positive pace.
#4 - Arthur Leclerc
"Really really good qualifying. Not happy with the results because in the end, we finished P4, but we definitely had the speed to put it on pole. My last lap before the red flag was really good and I was improving six tenths. That felt a bit bad but we can be happy about the work we did inside the team and by me as well. Yes, we could have put it on pole, but there are things we can't control."
#5 - Jak Crawford
"It was a disappointing qualifying but still in the top-7, we had really really good speed but in the end, it was a shame that we had one lap in the second set, there was a red flag then we weren't able to cross the line. We were unlucky but we had a really good car today so hopefully, it's good in the races as well."
#6 - Ollie Bearman
"P3 in qualy, I'm pretty happy after a messy session. A bit unlucky not to manage to get the lap in the end, but we were unlucky with the timing and everything. Starting P3 for the feature race on Sunday, I'm looking forward to it, should be a decent race. Maybe it will be wet tomorrow and pretty difficult as I had never raced here, from what I heard, the racing might be difficult with DRS trains, and difficult to overtake, but today I got a good turnaround from practice which was pretty difficult for me."