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Round 9 Thoughts from the Top 3

Round 9 Thoughts from the Top 3

FIA Formula 3: Nikola Tsolov, you are the race winner. Here at the feature race at the Hungaroring, your third win of the season and a great result for you and the team today. How do you feel now?

Nikola Tsolov: I feel really relieved and happy because I think that race in particular was very important for my career and for the future. It hasn’t started super well this season, so the more I show my potential, the better it will be for me and everyone who supports me.

FIA Formula 3: From P2 you overtook your teammate at the start, after that it was all about tire management and making sure Laurance van Hoepen stayed behind you?

Tsolov: Yeah, I think the start was the key to the race, so I had that in my mind before I started the race. I think the only chance I had to win the race was to do a good first lap, which I obviously did. My reaction time was good, the launch was good and that was it. From that moment on I just managed the race.

FIA Formula 3: You were told on the radio that van Hoepen wanted to overtake you and that you had to be careful. Did that affect your approach to the race?

Tsolov: At one point in the race I felt he was catching me way too much in T1 breaking, so my engineer warned me he might try a move, even though I thought he was still too far behind. Then I moved my breaking point by 2-3 meters, which is just enough to stay ahead and not give him a chance to catch me.

FIA Formula 3: This is a great result, considering you know you’re going to miss the next round in Spa. Firstly, what are you going to do next week? Will you be on track? And secondly, how are you going to prepare for the last round of the season in Monza after the summer break?

Tsolov: Well, I think I won’t be going to the races, I have another race that week in the championship that I’m actually banned from. I wish the driver who’s in my seat all the best and I hope the team does well and keeps pushing to keep second in the championship. A big summer break for me, I’m going to focus fully on preparing for the last round and what’s coming next year.

FIA Formula 3: Congratulations Laurens van Hoepen, you finished P2 from pole position on the grid today. This is your best result in Formula 3, but it is still disappointing. How do you feel now?

Laurens van Hoepen: Yeah, it’s double I would say, because in the end we had a strong weekend with pole position, I even scored some points in the sprint and then P2 in the feature, which is a lot of points. I definitely wanted to win it, just because it’s so difficult to overtake here, so when you have a good start it’s just a matter of managing the tyres. In the end I didn’t have a good start, which jeopardised the whole race. I pushed Nikola back, but in the end he was too strong. The dirty air is such a big factor here that it’s really difficult to overtake.

FIA Formula 3: What did you learn from this race? It’s disappointing, but often you learn the most from disappointments.

From Hoepen: Certainly if I am in a similar situation next time, I will do some things differently, especially in terms of choosing the clutch map that I am going to use. But I think one positive thing from this race was that I just stayed behind Nikola and managed the tyres well, which I think I did. In the end I still had a lot of tyres left to push, but in the end the Safety Car came, which was a bit of a shame.

FIA Formula 3: Looking at the bigger picture, it’s been a really strong weekend for you here at the Hungaroring. Do you feel like things are clicking together better and better?

From Hoepen: I think we are learning step by step and every weekend we are improving. So I think everything is going well and we just have to keep improving until the end of the season in Monza. We were already close to really big results for this year but they didn’t come because of some mistakes or some unlucky things, so finally getting a podium in a Feature Race is very nice.

FIA Formula 3: Next week we go to Spa-Francorchamps, what can we expect from you there?

From Hoepen: Well, hopefully more of the same I guess, that’s the target. The target is to win there clearly this time, so yeah, we’ll work extra hard to make sure that happens.

FIA Formula 3: Noel León, P3 from fourth on the grid today at the Hungaroring for the Feature Race, your best F3 result to date. You managed to gain a position and then it seemed more about managing the rest of the race. What was it like from the car?

Noël Leon: Yeah, super happy. Of course the weekend was really strong. Strong free practice, qualifying and yesterday in the sprint race we made a mistake with the clutch map, which made us lose a lot of positions. I knew we had a strong car, so today we focused very much on the start and we gained a position, so super happy with that. Of course I’m happy with the result, but the ARTs were a bit stronger than me, so something to look at, but I’m super happy with my best result in F3.

FIA Formula 3: From outside the car it felt like a race of waiting for something to happen, which didn’t necessarily happen. What was it like for you from inside the car? Was it tough?

Leon: Yeah, it was difficult to be honest because last year there was so much deg. So we expected relegation, but in this case there was no relegation in the race. So it was a full push race, it was tough on the tyres of course and tough on the drivers, but I think it was the first race where we didn’t have relegation, so I was happy to push on all the laps.

FIA Formula 3: Looking at your results today, what does that mean for the last two rounds of the season?

Leon: I’m super happy because I finally got it done on Sunday. I was so close to good results but then it didn’t go my way. But this gives a lot of confidence for Spa, and we have a good car, so I’m really looking forward to Spa.