Ayumu Iwasa Claims Top Spot in Tricky F3 Practice at Hungaroring; Vesti and Martins Follow Closely

Ayumu Iwasa of DAMS was the fastest man in Hungary for the FIA Formula 3 championship practice session of the weekend; He put in a lap time of 1:28.882 to top the timesheets. Championship leader Frederik Vesti of Prema followed the Japanese driver; the Mercedes junior was 0.149 seconds behind the Red Bull junior. Victor Martins, the Silverstone feature race winner, came in third.

With a time of 1:30.839, Martins established the early pace, pulling ahead of Roman Stanek and Jack Doohan in the first 10 minutes. The practice session was led by Vesti for almost 20 minutes with a lap time of 1:29.360 before the Japanese driver put himself on top of the leaderboard. The Dane had his laptime deleted in the beginning for going over the track limits as Martins led the grid. The top three were juggled between Iwasa, Vesti, and Martins, with Iwasa ultimately leading the final 10 minutes of the session as the fastest driver.

Alpine Junior Jack Doohan, last year’s sprint race winner, had driven to a purple sector 2, but his efforts were unfortunately put out after a lockup in turn 12, which resulted in the Aussie going wide.

Kush Maini secured fourth place, followed by championship contender Theo Pourchaire, with Roman Stanek, Jehan Daruvala, Enzo Fittipaldi, Isack Hadjar, and Richard Verschoor rounding off the top ten.