Mick Schumacher’s rich vein of form continued at a wet Red Bull Ring this morning when the German soared to a fourth FIA European F3 win in a row.
The Prema racer finished ahead of teammate Robert Shwartzman and Hitech’s Alex Palou.
Schumacher led from the start, but had to defend hard on the opening pair of laps to keep Shwartzman at bay, with the latter switching focus to defend from Ferdinand Habsburg.
Amidst the thick spray, the gap between the leading pair draw out to just over a second by lap four, until Shwartzman clawed four-tenths back thanks to three successful purple laps.
Showing supreme confidence, Schumacher once again built the gap to Shwartzman and then began to extend it to approximately two seconds, defeating his teammate’s charge in the process.
There was still plenty of pace in Shwartzman with the Russian registering a brace of fastest laps in the final two tours, but the leader at this stage was content to bring things home.
It proved a far more eventful race for Palou. Starting 13th, the Spaniard navigated his way around the melee caused by the slow starting Dan Ticktum and Jehan Daruvala to rise to 7th on the opening lap.
From there, Palou swept by Jonathan Aberdein (lap 2), Jüri Vips (lap 3), Habsburg (lap 5) before assuming a very hard fought place from Marcus Armstrong on lap 9. It was a position he would not surrender.
Armstrong had a late battle with Habsburg to hold 4th. Having deemed to have passed Armstrong for 3rd illegally on lap 2, Habsburg allowed the Kiwi to retake his position on lap 4, only to also allow Palou and Vips through in the process.
Now 6th, Habsburg repassed Vips one tour later and set about chasing the Armstrong/Palou battle, registering a blistering pace in the process. Once Palou had moved to the podium spot, Palou closed in on Armstrong and took 4th on lap 12. But having taken too much from his wet Hankook’s, Habsburg faded in the later laps, allowing Armstrong to catch and retake 4th position three laps from the end, with Habsburg settling for 5th.
Vips secured 6th after a tussle with Aberdein. The Estonian fell under pressure from Aberdein immediately after losing 5th to Habsburg and Aberdein wasted little time doing the same again to Vips. Despite initially pulling away from Vips, Aberdein fell back toward the Motopark racer, with Vips snatching the position back from the South African on the last lap.
Former championship leader Ticktum’s poor start dropped him from 6th to 10th by turn one and there was slow progress from there. The Briton spent several attacking Daruvala for 9th, before Daruvala made a brief escape by passing Fabio Scherer on lap nine.
Ticktum followed through two laps later and quickly restarted his attack on Daruvala, finally grabbing place with an audacious move on lap 16 to snatch 8th. Once taken, Daruvala fell under pressure from a resurgent Scherer, but was unable to hold off the Motopark man with Scherer assuming 9th on lap 17, relegating Daruvala to 10th place the final point.
The result was more than enough to gift Schumacher an 18-point lead over Ticktum with five races to go; however following race one, Schumacher claimed a further two poles for races two and three. While Schumacher cannot win the title this weekend – it will be decided at Hockenheim – he can certainly do a great deal of damage to Ticktum’s chances tomorrow.
