Formula 3: Beganovic back on the podium

Sweden’s Dino Beganovic enjoyed a strong weekend at the Hungaroring, coming second in the Feature Race.

Dino Beganovic needed to fight back from a disappointing previous round in Silverstone when an engine problem kept him out of the points and in Hungary he delivered, with a second place finish in the Feature Race. He also picked up a point for tenth in the Sprint race, taking his total to 94 points, which puts him fourth in the standings. “I am happy with this result and a good points haul, after the disappointment of Silverstone,” commented Dino. A lot of the credit must go to the team, because we never stopped pushing and we will continue to do so to the end of the season. It was a very complicated weekend in terms of tyre management, but overall we did a good job of dealing with it, as can be seen from the result in the Feature Race.”

Sprint Race. With the reversed grid order, after qualifying second, Beganovic started the first race from eleventh place. Tyre management was the main issue, making the 19 lap distance a real challenge. Dino dropped two places at the start, before fighting back to get into the top 10, which he did on the very last lap. “It was a hard race and throughout, the main concern was to save the tyres, but in general, we didn’t have the pace to get as high up the order as we had hoped.”

Feature Race. The last race in Hungary saw Beganovic hang on to second place. With track temperature around the 30 degree mark, tyre performance gradually dropped off for all the drivers, because of significant wear. In fact, the race distance was shortened from 24 to 19 laps, specifically because of the tyre situation. Dino did well to manage it, gradually lap by lap extending his lead over the third placed driver. “Right from the start I followed the leader (Zak O’Sullivan)” explained Dino. “And in the first few laps, I managed to pull out a small gap over those behind me, while concentrating at this stage on saving my tyres. In the final part of the race, I started to push to move forward, but maybe I waited too long, because I had quite a bit of rubber left at the end. But overall, I can be happy with second place, as it was important to end this weekend with a strong showing.”