Nikita Mazepin captures Hungarian victory

After heavy rain over the Hungarian track GP3 Series’ field opened the race on slick tyres with formation laps behind the safety car on the drying asphalt. When the lights went off the poleman Anthoine Hubert took a slow start resulting in an overtake by his teammate Nikita Mazepin and the Italian Leonardo Pulcini who accelerated very well in the beginning of the race finding some gap beside the polesitter. 

The Russian ART driver immediately started to build up a gap on the second driver Pulcini with more than a second interval only after one lap. Behind the top three a close fight started for positions among Callum Ilott who passed by his teammate Jake Hughes on the first lap followed by David Beckmann and Joey Mawson. Trident’s new driver put Hughes under serious pressure forcing him into a series of mistakes to make. The ART driver showing great defense despite the serious attacks kept his position over the German Beckmann. 

On lap 8 Dorian Boccolacci and Juan Manel Correa attacked each other for the tenth position behind Ryan Tveter who fell into eights position after poor start. The top three remained Mazepin, Pulcini and Hubert followed by the continuous battle of Ilott, Beckmann who found pace beside Hughes and passed by the Brit with Mawson behind all within a second of each other. On lap 13 Mawson tried to overtake Hughes at turn 1 but took the line too wide and went a bit off track but managed come back without losing position.

In the meantime, Leonardo Pulcini seemed to arrive on the Russian leader closing up for the first position when on lap 14 Mawson’s attacks on Hughes ended with a collision leaving the Australian Arden driver out at Turn 2. With some damage at the side of road Niko Kari and Pedro Piquet touched resulting in a race ending puncture for MP Motorsport’s Finn and a broken front wing for the Brazilian.

Despite DRS got disabled due to technical issues David Backmann managed to arrive on Anthoine Hubert who was still on third place behind Mazepin and Pulcini but could not overtake the Frenchman and finished his first race with Trident on fourth position.

Nikita Mazepin crossed the line with 3.8 seconds advantage over Campos Racing’s Italian Leonardo Pulcini claiming his third podium in the season ahead of Anthoine Hubert who stretched his championship lead over Callum Ilott to 17 points with third place. Beckmann set his best GP3 result so far followed by Ryan Tveter who took fifth over Callum Ilott with Juan Manuel Correa and Dorian Boccolacci on eights position scoring pole for the sprint race.

2018 GP3 Series Round 5 – Budapest, Hungary – Race 1 Classification