Formula 3 season opener over, Czech Stanek scores first point

Formula 3 has had its opening weekend of the season in Spain. The new format brings 3 races in two days. And this year the Czech driver Roman Stanek, who races for the Hitech Grand Prix team, has joined the youth category. And he won his first season point.

The same monoposts, which give all drivers the same starting position. Moreover, this year there are also very interesting names in the 30-strong starting field, divided into 10 teams.

Among them are, for example, the son of former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, David, or the brother of current Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, Arthur.

The circuit near Barcelona, Spain, got to know the pole position holders for Sunday’s main race on Friday. That’s Norwegian Dennis Hauger. Czech Roman Stanek took a solid 14th position.

In Saturday’s races, there is a lot of reverse grid work, with the top 12 from qualifying being reversed for the first sprint race and the top 12 from the end of the first race for the second sprint race. However, only the top ten take points.

The opening 3 events of the 2021 season offered 3 different winners. The first fifteen points for winning the sprint race went to Russia’s Alexander Smolyar, emulated by Olli Caldwell in the afternoon. Stanek finished 16th and 12th and thus did not score any points. In addition, he was the worst of the trio of Team Hitech in both races on Saturday.

He had to wait until Sunday’s main race for his first point. Sunday’s race is where most of the points are distributed to most of the scoring riders.

This also benefited the aforementioned qualifying winner Hauger, who despite a miserable start held on to first place across all 22 laps and scored a total of 27 points (25 for the win + 2 for the fastest lap of the race).

Roman Stanek, on the other hand, had a great start and had to deal with an attack from Russian Smolyar at the end. For the 17-year-old Czech driver, this is only the second race in F3 in which he managed to score points. Last year he only managed to do so in one of the races at Monza in Italy, where he finished eighth.

The next race for the junior branch of F1 will take place at the end of June, when the young drivers will visit the Le Castellet circuit in France. And it won’t just be Roman Stanek who will be looking to score more points in the drivers’ championship.

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