Lorenzo Colombo scored his and Campos Racing’s first Formula 3 win in the opening Hungaroring sprint race, beating the Red Bull juniors of Jonny Edgar and Ayumu Iwasa.
Colombo started the race from second on the grid behind reverse polesitter Edgar. The Italian looked to the inside of Edgar at Turn 1, but had to slip back to hold second as Iwasa tried to take them both around the outside.
The top three ran in single file in the first few laps, and quickly broke the DRS gap back to Olli Caldwell in third. But despite Edgar, Colombo and Iwasa being separated by just a second in total, neither was able to make any move to change the order.
That changed soon after though, as Colombo started putting in a sequence of good laps to close up more on Edgar. At the beginning of lap 8 Colombo drew alongside Edgar under DRS on the start/finish straight and swept around the outside at Turn 1 to take the lead.
But as Colombo settled in front of Edgar, the Carlin started slowing with a mechanical problem and dropping down the order. As Edgar fell out of the points and eventually pulled over to retire, Iwasa inherited second and Caldwell third.
Iwasa wasn’t able to pressure Colombo for the lead though, as he himself had to defend second from Caldwell. Just two laps after taking first place, Colombo had already opened up a second gap over Iwasa to protect from the DRS threat.
Colombo’s drive to victory was briefly worried on lap 16, when Frederik Vesti came to a halt by the track and brought out a safety car. But at the restart on lap 19, Colombo went early through the final corner and caught Iwasa off guard, and restored his one second gap within two laps.
Colombo eventually crossed the line with a 1.5 second lead, and dedicated his win to team founder Adrian Campos, who passed away in January this year. Iwasa scored his first F3 podium in second, while Caldwell finished in third and moves up to second place in the championship.
Logan Sargeant finished fourth for Charouz ahead of Clement Novalak. Championship leader Dennis Hauger took sixth place from eleventh on the grid, having made up places at the safety car restart. Alex Smolyar, David Schumacher, Jack Doohan and Matteo Nannini rounded out the points, and Enzo Fittipaldi finished twelfth to take pole for race 2.