FIA Formula 3: Hungaroring, Rd.8 2023
Jonny Edgar and his MP Motorsport team come away from the Hungarian Grand Prix in positive form after securing two top 10 finishes and more valuable championship points.
The weekend began in dry conditions and Jonny enjoyed a drama free Friday morning, running up a decent number of laps before an accident involving one of his competitors brought the red flag out and the session to an early halt.
Qualifying in the afternoon wasn’t so straight forward as rainfall meant the session began in wet conditions. Despite the tricky conditions, which caught some of his rivals out, the D.Tolson and Sons supported racer qualified in 8th position.
For Saturday’s Sprint Race (in which the top 12 positions are reversed) Jonny was forced to start P8 courtesy of a grid penalty from the British Grand Prix. He made a decent start to stay within the top 10, despite managing severe tyre degradation, and despite a safety car period and VSC, Jonny held onto 10th position until the last few laps, when the BRDC Superstars driver avoided a collision at turn 1 and gained two more positions. Jonny would hang on to 8th place until the race ended.
The Feature Race on Sunday started very well as the Cumbrian based driver made a good start challenging for 6th position before settling into 7th. As Jonny was managing his tyres he lost a couple of positions, but in the last laps of the race he was able to push forward and regain a number of positions through some great overtakes and battles to finish just +0.110 seconds behind the 7th placed car.
Jonny: “Qualifying was interesting with the session starting wet and drying very quickly so I had to adapt quickly and luckily I got quite a good lap at the end which was good enough for P8. Unfortunately for the sprint race I had the grid penalty from Silverstone so I started 8th and managed to finish there. It was a very difficult race because of the extreme tyre degradation.”
“Sunday’s race was hard in the early laps as some cars around were a bit faster but then at the end of the race I managed to gain some places back and finish P8 which I was quite happy with, to score points in both races.”
The penultimate round of the 2023 FIA Formula 3 Championship takes Jonny and his MP Motorsport team to Spa-Francorchamps this weekend (28 – 30 July). Free practice, qualifying and the races will be broadcast live on Sky Sports F1.
Qualifying
P8. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport) +0.766
Sprint Race
P8. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport) +10.194
Feature Race
P8. Jonny Edgar (MP Motorsport) +27.844