Triple victory for Marciello at Nürburgring

This weekend, things couldn’t have been much better for Italian Raffaele Marciello (Prema Powerteam): at the 3.629 kilometres long circuit lay-out of the Nürburgring, he won all three races of the FIA Formula 3 European Championship. However, not only the leader in the drivers’ standings shone in the Eifel. The other young drivers showed strong performances in the shadow of the Nürburg castle as well.

One of them was Luis Felipe Derani (Fortec Motorsports). At the Nürburgring, the 19-year-old Brazilian climbed onto the winners’ podium for the first time this season in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship. On Saturday, he took the chequered flag in second place, on Sunday, he came third and scored a pair of podium finishes for his team Fortec Motorsports for the first time after a long spell. Most recently, team-mate Félix Serrallés (Fortec Motorsport) had scored a pair of second places at Hockenheim in early May.

For Derani, the seventh race weekend went according to plan, too. In the Eifel, he scored more points than in the 18 races held before this season and moved up from 14th to ninth place in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship drivers’ standings. “Prior to these races, we have been working a lot on the car and it was worth it. But now, we can’t sit back and relax because of what we have achieved, we have to continue working into this direction,” Derani said with a view of the future.

Like Derani, Alexander Sims (ThreeBond with T-Sport) also scored a pair of podium finishes in the Eifel. Thus, the Brit made it a premiere: for the first time, a driver of the ThreeBond with T-Sport team, the only outfit to use a ThreeBond Nissan engine, climbed on the podium. Alexander Sims, who made his comeback in Formula 3 at the Norisring, was particularly happy for his team: “These two podium results have shown that the T-Sport team and the ThreeBond Nissan engine have great potential.”

Title candidate and runner-up in the drivers’ standings, Felix Rosenqvist (kfzteile24 Mücke Motorsport) was less happy while heading home from the Eifel. In the Eifel, the Swede scored only 27 points from the three races. Together with Raffaele Marciello’s three race wins that brought the Italian 75 points, Rosenqvist is now 72.5 points down on Marciello.

The latter made his mark on the seventh race weekend, not only with his three race wins, as the protégé of the Ferrari Driver Academy also claimed all three pole positions: “The weekend was just perfect, because I have scored the maximum number of points. Still, I am not looking at the title, but I am working from one race to another. I want to score maximum points in every race and then, the rest will come automatically,” the 18-year-old keeps a low profile.

In six weeks, the FIA Formula 3 European Championship continues at Zandvoort in The Netherlands, 28 until 29 September.

FIA F3