The Swede finished third in today’s Feature Race in Bahrain, thus ending his first Formula 3 weekend on a high. He is third in the championship.
Third in the Feature Race, fourth in the Sprint and third in the standings. There were plenty of positives to Dino Beganovic’s Formula 3 debut, confirming the promise shown in pre-season testing. The 19 year old Swede gained in confidence with every lap and now he has built a good base from which to carry on his work with the Ferrari Driver Academy. “I am really pleased with how the whole weekend went,” commented Beganovic. “It was fantastic to take my first Formula 3 podium, starting from eighth on my debut weekend. I want to thank the team for its support, it’s a great way to start the season and a great starting point. It was an intense weekend and I learned a lot that will be useful in the coming rounds. I think it’s going to be a tough championship but we have everything in place to do well.”
Qualifying and Sprint Race. As is often the case, qualifying to decide the feature race grid was affected by traffic. In the closing minutes, Dino managed to secure eighth place. Beganovic started the Sprint Race from fifth place and after two Safety Car periods, he managed to pass team-mate Paul Aron to cross the line in fourth place, the best rookie finish. “It’s a positive result,” confirmed Beganovic. “At half distance I had dropped back to sixth but I managed to make it up to fourth. It was a closely fought race and my only regret is that I wasn’t able to do more race laps as my pace was good and I could have been in the fight for the podium.”
Feature Race. Beganovic started the main race from the fourth row, moving up to seventh after the start and staying there until lap 9. At the restart after a Safety Car period, his pace was good and he moved up to sixth before pushing hard to catch the leaders. In the closing laps, Dino having managed his tyres well, pulled off two overtaking moves to finish third. “We had really good speed and I managed two nice overtakes and moved up the order. It was good and now we can be optimistic for the coming races.”