Formula 3: Beganovic on the defensive

After a tricky qualifying, Dino limited the damage, finishing eighth in the Sprint and Feature Races.

Dino Beganovic came away from the Barcelona-Catalunya Circuit with seven points from two eighth place finishes, enough for the Swede to maintain fifth place in the championship at the midpoint of the season. “The weekend was badly affected by qualifying,” he explained. “In the first part of the session the feeling from the car wasn’t perfect but overall we were competitive. Then in the key part of the session, when we had fitted the third and last set of new tyres, the lap time didn’t improve and I found myself 15^th.”

Sprint Race. “From the cockpit it all felt positive, but the stopwatch told a different story. We tried to understand in which areas we could improve the car and in the Sprint Race, at least in the early stages, the car felt better.” With a good opening lap, Beganovic got into the points but his climb was halted by the arrival of the Safety Car. “When the race resumed, the situation got a bit complicated and the problems we had in qualifying returned, so from then on I tried to manage the remaining laps as well as possible, bringing home a few championship points.”

Feature Race. Beganovic adopted the same approach for the Feature Race, gritting his teeth to come home eighth. “All in all, four points is not too bad,” reckoned Dino. “I again got a good start, but the best news is that a change to the set-up after the Sprint race worked well. Maybe I pushed a bit too much in the early part of the race and that compromised the tyres, but we will analyse it all with the engineers. The race and indeed the whole weekend was difficult, but we limited the damage. Now we will focus on the back-to-back races in Spielberg and Silverstone.”