Formula 3: Inthraphuvasak secures maiden F3 victory at Silverstone

F1 Grand Prix, GP Great Britain, Silverstone Circuit

Campos Racing Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak secured his maiden victory in FIA Formula 3, becoming the first driver from Thailand to win in the Championship. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo reports on the F3 Sprint race.

The Campos Racing driver started from reverse grid pole and fended off his rivals at lights out in the opening corners.

Brando Badoer and Nikola Tsolov made contact at Turn 5. The Prema driver stopped on the track, but incident saw the Bulgarian drop to the back of the field.

The incident required a safety car, and the order was Inthraphuvasak, Nael, Ho, Stenshorne, van Hoepen, Leon, Boya, Tramnitz, Unochukwu, with Wurz completing the top ten.

The safety car peeled into the pits on Lap 4. Nael was eager to make the jump on the race leader Inthraphuvasak, and he was able to make the move at Turn 5 to take the lead.

On Lap 8, Ho started to struggle for grip, and he came under pressure from van Hoepen. Two laps later, Nael was told to give Inthraphuvasak the position which he immediately completed. The Frenchman was hurried up by his team, but he found it tough to keep up with the Thai driver.

Having given the position back to Inthraphuvasak, Nael stated to fall back from the race leader. The Frenchman suffered a big snap of oversteer through Copse which allowed third-placed Stenshorne to close in, who managed to move up to second into Stowe.

With Nael having struggled for pace, van Hoepen got to within DRS of the Frenchman. The battle for the third spot on the podium intensified, and as the pair battled from Stowe into Vale, Boya managed to close in on them.

Entering the final lap, Stenshorne had cut the gap down to 1.2s, but there was no catching Inthraphuvasak, who claimed his first victory in FIA Formula 3 ahead of the Norwegian.

Boya managed to complete a pass for third place on the penultimate lap, Nael was handed a ten-second time penalty for his incident with van Hoepen. It dropped him out of the points and gave fourth to the ART Grand Prix driver.

Behind them, Ugochukwu wound up fifth, ahead of Ho, Leon, Camara, Wurz, with Roman Bilinski having completed the points in 10th.

Commenting on his maiden F3 victory, Campos Racing's Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak noted: “P1, super happy and I want to thank everyone and the team for giving me a very good car today. Fully focused on tomorrow now and I think we have the pace to fight for some good points as well.”

Rafael Câmara moves onto 120 points in the lead of the Drivers’ Championship, ahead of Tim Tramnitz in second on 93 and Nikola Tsolov on 89. Martinius Stenshorne is fourth on 76, 10 ahead of Mari Boya in fifth.

Over in the Teams’ Standings, TRIDENT is at the top on 207 points ahead of Campos Racing who go up to 188 points in second. MP Motorsport is third on 158, with Van Amersfoort Racing fourth and level on points with ART Grand Prix.