Nasr maintains his lead after F3 Nurburgring round

With the British Formula 3 Championship now at the half-way stage, Nasr remains on top in the Sunoco Daytona Challenge standings after his fifth win of the season.

At this same point last year 2010 British F3 Champion Jean-Eric Vergne led the Sunoco Daytona Challenge but was just beaten to the prize by Radical star Ross Kaiser. Can Felipe Nasr change the trend and become the first British F3 driver to maintain his lead up until the very end?

Qualifying saw eight Formula 3 drivers’ penalised for not respecting yellow flags during the morning’s qualifying at the Nurburgring. The yellow flags were out when Sino Vision’s Adderly Fong went off early in the session. Antonio Felix da Costa, Pedron Nunes, Kotaro Sakurai, Scott Pye, Pipo Derani, Yann Cunha, Hywel Lloyd and Fahmi Ilyas were all demoted five places on the grid for the opening race.

The opening race for the British F3 was a fight for the win between Kevin Magnussen and Felipe Nasr;  both made excellent starts from the front row of the grid and left the rest of the field far behind as they pursued the win.

Magnussen started from pole and unfortunately Nasr couldn’t find a way past his Carlin team mate and Kevin took the win stealing the 100 points awarded for first place in the Sunoco Daytona Challenge (Magnussen isn’t registered in the challenge due to sponsorship commitments, meaning no one was awarded the 100 points). Nasr however went on to finish second and take 75 points towards the challenge.

The star of the race was Fortec’s Harry Tincknell who made the start of his life from eighth on the grid to seize third place, making it his first ‘main’ race podium and taking 55 points towards the challenge.

 “I had the best start ever, everything just hooked up perfectly and I went from 8^th to second by the first corner.”

“I was on the outside of Nasr however came through the first corner in third after I got hit by Heurtas,” Carlos Huertas damaged his steering from the contact and he ended up retiring. “From there I didn’t quite have the pace of the leaders but I’m very happy with my first ‘main’ race podium.”

Jazeman Jaafar went on to take fourth place closely followed by William Buller who took fifth place and 30 points toward the challenge. New signing for Hitech, Antonio Felix da Costa, finished sixth with Racing Steps Foundation racer Jack Harvey right behind him in seventh taking 20 points. Rupert Svendeson-Cook finished eight taking the 15 points towards the challenge ahead of Menasheh Idafar in ninth with 10 points and Lucas Foresti in tenth taking the final 5 points.

The final round of the weekend saw Felipe Nasr take his fifth win of the British F3 season. Kevin Magnussen had initially led from pole however an engine misfire enabled Nasr to sweep past and take the lead and the chequered flag.

Carlos Heurtas made a great race start despite being handed a three-place grid penalty following a collision in the mornings second round of the weekend. Huertas was promoted to second after Magnussens misfire but newcomer Antonio Felix da Costa made an opportunistic move and denied Huertas second and 75 points. Huertas however still managed to cross the line in third and take 55 points towards the challenge.

Magnussen ended up limping over the finish line in fifth place behind Lucas Foresti who took fourth place and 40 points toward the challenge. Svendson-Cook placed sixth taking 25 points, ahead of William Buller who took 20 points, Pietro Fantin with 15 points, Harry Tincknell with 10 points and another new comer to Hitech Pedro Nunes who finished tenth.

The next point scoring round will be at Spa this weekend for the British GT.

To keep up to date on the challenge and for the latest point scores check out www.sunocodaytonachallenge.com, on our Twitter feed @RacingAAOC and Facebook: Racing News AAOC.