F. Regional Asia: Leclerc and Beganovic on top in Dubai

Arthur consolidates championship lead with a second win of the season. Dino flies in Race 2 to take his first victory in the category.

The third round of the Formula Regional Asia championship went very well for Arthur Leclerc and Dino Beganovic. Between them, the Ferrari Driver Academy students won two of the three races, with a total of five podium finishes. Leclerc was runner-up in the first race at Dubai’s Grand Prix circuit. He then came third in Race 2, before going on to win the final race, thus consolidating his series lead on 131 points. 

Grabbing the opportunity. Leclerc made up plenty of places over the weekend, thanks to having great pace and reading the races well, so that he grabbed any opportunity that came his way. “It was a really good weekend, we found the pace we’d been looking for and the results were very good,” said the Monegasque. “There’s still work to do, because we have not managed to get the tyres to work at their best in qualifying and, for the next round we will try and optimise that, just as we did with the race pace this weekend.”

A first for Dino. Beganovic took a well-deserved win in Race 2, something the 18 year old Swede had been chasing for a while. After a third place finish in Race 1, Dino started the next one from eighth on the grid and made up four places on the opening lap. Two laps later he was up to third. Then at half distance came the decisive moves on Delano Van’t Hoff and Michael Belov that produced some appreciative applause. 

Satisfaction. “It was a pretty good weekend with a third place and a win in the first two races,” commented Beganovic. “But then unfortunately, things did not go as well in the third race. But it was really great to stand on the top of the podium, something I’d been chasing for a while. It was well deserved comeback, we did a great job managing to move up the order very well after starting from eighth on the grid. The outcome of Race 3 was a bit disappointing because the incident with Paul Aaron meant I didn’t score what would have been some useful points.” After three of the five weekends on the calendar, Beganovic has moved up from seventh to fourth in the standings, on 88 points.