The F3 race ended with a mega crash between team mates.
Tuukka Taponen finished 13th in the opening race of the F3 season. Dutch Photo Agency
Tuukka Taponen failed to qualify for the F3 opening weekend on Friday.
The mechanics of the MP Motorsport team couldn’t give the car from Lohja a perfect blow, and the wear of the Pirelli medium tires surprised the whole team.
Taponen only made it to Saturday’s sprint race from the 14th grid, and right away in the first lap Jin Nakamura got past him.
However, the 19-year-old formula promise settled in and cleared himself ahead of the Japanese practically immediately in the next corners.
A moment later, the team mate Mattia Colnaghi spun at full speed onto the gravel and let the whole hose pass.
The sprint race starts with the top 12 in reverse order of merit. After Taponen took the 13th place in the race, directly in front of him was the winner of the time trial Théophile Naël.
In the middle of the original race, the home crowd had to watch in horror as the Aussie driver of James Wharton the trip ended in a violent crash, team mate by Louis Sharp with.
Wharton, from Melbourne, forced the Kiwi driver off the track first and he didn’t digest the trick. The New Zealander drove directly into Wharton’s side and thus the Prema drivers’ race ended with a double suspension.
Red flags
The jury immediately raised red flags because the safety fence needed to be repaired.
However, the destruction was so great that the railway officials could not finish the work in the stipulated time. After waiting for more than half an hour, the jury decided to end the race after only nine laps.
Originally, you had to drive 20 laps in the sprint. Taponen had already risen to 11th place due to the suspension of the Prema duo, but since the race rounds did not even reach the halfway point, points were only awarded to the first five.
The final results were finally calculated based on the situation of the last full lap, so Wharton and Sharp were still ahead of the Finn. Taponen’s final ranking was therefore 13th.
In the end, the Spaniard was crowned the winner of the sprint Bruno del Pino.
