FIA Formula 3: Monza, Rd.10 2023
Jonny Edgar ends his 2023 FIA Formula 3 season with his first victory in the championship, after an impressive feature race performance.
After a challenging campaign, the BRDC Superstars driver and his MP Motorsport team arrived at the “Cathedral of Speed” – Monza, with the aim of ending the season on a high.
However, the weekend didn’t start off great for Jonny or his Formula 3 rivals as a number of red flags in Friday’s free practice session hampered everyone’s running and Jonny wasn’t able to practice slipstreaming other cars in the build up to qualifying.
Despite this, Jonny was able to put together a fantastic lap in the early stages of qualifying, putting him P4 moments before a red flag was brought out. As a result of more cars running off later in the session, very few drivers were able to improve on their times and as the session wasn’t restarted after a second red flag, Jonny secured his best ever qualifying result in the championship.
On Saturday’s Sprint Race, with the top 12 from qualifying reversed on the grid, Jonny made a decent start from 9th place but going into the first corner a car behind suffered a puncture, lost control and unfortunately wiped out Jonny and a couple of other cars. The damage was too bad and Jonny retired on the spot.
Jonny went into the Feature Race on Sunday morning without any idea of how the car would handle. Despite this, the Cumbrian based driver made a fantastic start and was up to second position on the first lap before moving his way into the lead. The first safety car was deployed on lap six.
On the restart, the D.Tolson and Sons backed driver came under huge pressure from Caio Collet for the lead but he used his race-craft to stay ahead. Collet continued his assault but was unable to get past Jonny before the safety car made its second appearance.
Once again Jonny held his nerve until the race was interrupted again by the safety car, setting up a last lap shootout. Jonny timed the restart perfectly to keep his lead and secure his first Formula 3 career win.
Jonny: “Practice was quite difficult, there were a few red flags and I wasn’t able to try slipstreaming other cars ahead of qualifying so the result wasn’t great and we tried a few things which we needed to fix too. In qualifying we knew there would be a higher chance of red flags so it was very important to get a good lap in early. I got a good slipstream on my lap and after the red flags and the session not being restarted we qualified in 4th which was nice, a good place to start on Sunday. Saturday I started 9th but the car behind me had a puncture and my race was unfortunately over at the first corner which was a shame. The team fixed the car for Sunday but we didn’t know how it would perform in the race which made it difficult to work out what to expect from the feature race but I worked it out soon and was up to second on lap one and before long had gotten into the lead. Then me and Collet, in second, kept swapping places and just letting one another go in order to not lose time.”
Italian Grand Prix FIA Formula 3
Qualifying:
P4. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport) +0.228
Sprint Race:
DNF. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport)
Feature Race
P1. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport)
FIA Formula 3 championship points after 18 races
P.13 Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport) 55pts
