Pepe Marti took victory in the opening Formula 3 sprint race of the 2023 season in Bahrain.
Starting second, Marti passed reverse grid polesitter Franco Colapinto five laps from the end of the race to claim the top step of the podium. He set the fastest lap in the progress, giving him maximum points on Saturday.
After a clean first lap, it took just four corners of the second for the Safety Car to be extracted when Rafael Villagomez came across Gabriel Bartoleto’s front wing, sending him spinning into the wall and out of the race.
Bartoleto was soon involved in more contact immediately after the restart when he collided with Kaylen Frederick at Turn 10, giving the latter a puncture.
Luke Browning and Sophia Floersch had already been spun round in separate incidents at Turn Two on the same lap, and while the German was able to continue, the Hitech driver’s day was over.
It was largely clean running from there, and a closely contested race ended in victory for Campos’ Spaniard.
Caio Collet came home third to round off the podium places ahead of Dino Beganovic and Paul Aron. Oliver Goethe finished sixth on the opening race of his first full F3 season, while Gregoire Saucy ended up seventh.
Leonardo Fornaroli took eighth on his debut, with Jonny Edgar and Sebastian Montoya rounding off the points.
The drivers will all be spoken to by the stewards after the race after what they deemed erratic driving from several of them on the first Safety Car restart.
The result was also Marti’s first race win in the series.
