Daizun Download: FREC Spa-Francorchamps - Round 3
Round 3 took us to one of motorsport's most iconic circuits, Spa-Francorchamps, where I qualified P10 on Friday to set up what would become one of the most unpredictable weekends of the season so far.
Credit: © Dutch Photo Agency
Race 1 | Saturday morning
The weekend's first race never got started. Severe weather rolled in overnight and didn't let up, with heavy rain and lightning strikes making conditions at Spa genuinely dangerous throughout the morning. After a formation lap behind the safety car, race control made the right call to suspend and ultimately cancel the session entirely. No racing laps were completed and no championship points were awarded. Disappointing, but the right decision - Spa in those conditions is unforgiving, and safety had to come first.
Credit: © Dutch Photo Agency
Race 2 | Saturday afternoon
With Race 1 cancelled, the Saturday afternoon session was renumbered Race 1 (which is a little confusion if you’re looking for the live streams) on the official timesheets - but it felt every bit like a bonus race we had to make count. Starting from P10 on the fifth row of the grid, I was immediately on the move. In the opening laps I pushed through to eighth, then seventh, before a safety car was deployed following contact between Popov and Francot.
The restarts suited me. Each time the field bunched up and the green flag dropped, I was ready, and with team-mate Alex Ninovic directly ahead in sixth, there was a clear target to chase. A second safety car around the eighteen-minute mark to recover Dion Gowda from Speakers Corner brought another reset, and with the track beginning to dry in places as the sun finally broke through, the pace was building nicely.
It was a composed, measured race in genuinely tricky conditions - the kind of afternoon where consistency and judgement matter as much as outright speed. The eventual win went to rookie Alexandre Munoz of ART Grand Prix, who converted pole to a flag-to-flag victory ahead of Rashid Al Dhaheri and Keann Nakamura-Berta.
Credit: © Dutch Photo Agency
Qualifying 2 | Sunday
A real statement of pace. With the circuit drying and the sun out, conditions evolved rapidly across the session, and the split-group format created a lottery element that made it all the more competitive. Early in the final group's run, I went to the top of the timesheets - a sign that the setup was working and the confidence from Saturday was carrying over. The field closed up as the track rubbered in and others found lap time late on, but to have led the timesheets at any point around a 7km circuit like Spa is a result in itself.
I qualified seventh in my group, which put me fourteenth on the grid overall. Pole went to Maksimillian Popov of Trident Motorsport, with Rashid Al Dhaheri alongside him on the front row. Championship leader Sebastian Wheldon found himself back on row four, keeping the title fight open heading into the final race of the round. This shows how close it is across the whole grid where a tenth can take you from top 3 to middle of the pack.
Credit: © Dutch Photo Agency
Race 2 | Sunday
Starting from P14, the final race of the weekend was always going to be a race of patience and opportunity, and it delivered exactly that. The introduction of 100 seconds of Race Mode - extra power deployable at any point after lap one - added a tactical layer that kept every overtake and defence honest. Due to the adverse weather we hadn't had Race Mode all weekend until this point, and the question of when to use it made an already intense race even more unpredictable.
I worked my way through the field in the opening stages, benefitting from contact between Olivieri and Ninovic to move past Dupe and Nakamura-Berta, and settled into eleventh before further incidents ahead reshuffled the pack. The order changed with almost every lap. With just over twenty minutes remaining I got past Costa to move further up the order, and the race looked set to deliver a strong points finish.
Two late safety car periods changed the complexion of everything. The first, deployed with twelve minutes on the clock to recover Almaosherji and Costa, bunched the field. Then, just as the lights went green with three minutes left on the clock, Hanna spun and brought out the safety car again - and the race ended before we could go back to green-flag racing. A finish just outside the top ten, with the positions locked behind the safety car, was frustrating given the pace shown throughout, but in a field this competitive and a race this chaotic, points finishes are hard-earned.
The race win went to Maksiimillian Popov, who led from the front and held off Alexander Abkhazava to take his first single-seater victory. Rashid Al Dhaheri completed the podium in third and added the fastest lap point for good measure.
Spa had its moments and potential, but the weekend never quite came together the way it should have. The pace was there but the weather and late safety cars just had other ideas. Onwards to the next round.
