Hungaroring F3: Ahmed takes points lead with first win

Ahmed led from start to finish, while Red Bull Junior Ticktum dropped out of third place when his brake pedal went long and he was forced to pull off to the side of the track.

From second on the grid, Ahmed’s Hitech GP Dallara-Mercedes easily beat the Motopark car of poleman Ticktum away from the line, while Prema Powerteam’s Marcus Armstrong made his trademark rapid start to vault from fourth to second.

Ticktum tried hard to repass Armstrong on the first lap before the Ferrari protege began to consolidate second place.

On the fifth lap, Ticktum ran wide at Turn 1 before rejoining – he then locked up at Turn 2 and ran off the circuit again, before pulling into an access road.

That promoted Alex Palou to third place and, although the Hitech driver got close to Armstrong – who had a loose mirror so found it difficult to monitor the Spaniard – he never looked like mounting a serious bid for second place.

After early pressure from Armstrong, Ahmed pulled out three seconds over the first half of the race, and then stabilised the gap until the finish – he now holds a three-point championship lead over Guan Yu Zhou.

Zhou had no answer to the pace of the leading trio as he circulated in fourth, and equally he never came under threat from Prema teammate Robert Shwartzman.

Jehan Daruvala had a tougher time in sixth place, the lead Carlin driver spending most of the distance successfully fending off the Prema machine of Mick Schumacher, who had risen from 11th on the grid.

This is turn allowed two more Carlin drivers, Ferdinand Habsburg and Sacha Fenestraz, to shadow the duo in front, Habsburg finally breaking his points duck for 2018 after a dismal run of bad luck.

The final point was claimed by Hitech’s Ben Hingeley.

Race results:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time/Gap
1	Enaam Ahmed	Hitech	35:50.068
2	Marcus Armstrong	Prema	2.872
3	Alex Palou	Hitech	4.666
4	Guan Yu Zhou	Prema	8.077
5	Robert Shwartzman	Prema	10.606
6	Jehan Daruvala	Carlin	14.187
7	Mick Schumacher	Prema	14.492
8	Ferdinand Habsburg	Carlin	15.436
9	Sacha Fenestraz	Carlin	17.565
10	Ben Hingeley	Hitech	18.998
11	Fabio Scherer	Motopark	26.582
12	Ralf Aron	Prema	27.411
13	Marino Sato	Motopark	29.7
14	Jonathan Aberdein	Motopark	31.665
15	Keyvan Andres	Van Amersfoort	33.04
16	Devlin DeFrancesco	Carlin	33.676
17	Juri Vips	Motopark	34.299
18	Sebastian Fernandez	Motopark	34.913
19	Ameya Vaidyanathan	Carlin	36.157
20	Nikita Troitskiy	Carlin	40.593
21	Julian Hanses	ma-con	48.221
22	Petru Florescu	Fortec	57.7
23	Artem Petrov	Van Amersfoort	1 Lap
Ret	Dan Ticktum	Motopark	-