The weather played a major role over the Belgian weekend and Dino Beganovic had a disappointing time of it because of unfortunate strategy choices.
Dino Beganovic had a complicated time of it in the eighth round of the Formula 3 season, held at Spa-Francorchamps. The Ferrari Driver Academy student qualified in a good seventh place, while both races were affected by rain. His pace was not the quickest and the race strategies were not best suited to the tyres, so the Swedish driver could only manage to finish 22nd and 16th. “It was a very disappointing weekend,” he said. “Not scoring points wasn’t what we were hoping for going into the weekend. The conditions were not easy, especially in the Feature Race and we will have to carefully analyse what did not work, because I was never in the fight for the points places. Now comes the summer break, but I will use this time to prepare as well as possible for the final round in Monza.”
Sprint Race. Qualifying seventh, meant Beganovic started from sixth on the grid. He lost three places on the opening lap to be ninth. The situation was very tricky, running on slick tyres from the start with the rain intensifying with every lap, so that several drivers made mistakes, leading to the arrival of the Safety Car. That left only two actual racing laps before the chequered flag, which Beganovic took in ninth place. However, Dino then picked up a penalty for causing a collision and the 10 seconds added to his race time dropped him to 22nd. “It was a disappointing race,” commented Beganovic. “The conditions were immediately very demanding given we were on slicks on a track that soon got wet. I got a good start and was fighting with the lead group, but then I got into a duel and lost places. It was my fault, because the car was well balanced and unfortunately the long Safety Car periods meant I couldn’t use the performance to make up places.”
Feature Race. The track was still damp from overnight rain and the field was split in terms of its tyre choices. Beganovic went for slicks and after one lap behind the Safety Car, the race began with a rolling start. It proved very difficult for those on slicks and the lack of grip saw Dino drop down to 17th place. The Safety Car came out at the end of the second lap because several cars had gone off track and the race was thus neutralised for four laps. Dino’s tyre choice proved to be the wrong one because it was only in the last two laps that those on slicks were able to lap faster than those on wets and therefore too late to make up places. Beganovic got to the finish line without making any mistakes, classified 16th.