F3 Australia: Bortoleto wins back-to-back feature races

From pole, Trident driver Bortoleto didn’t put a wheel wrong over the course of the 23-lap race, holding off ART man Saucy to make it back-to-back feature race victories by 0.596 seconds.

Alpine junior Gabriele Mini led home a long train of battling cars to take the final podium spot for Hitech.

Bortoleto maintained the lead from Saucy and Mini at the start on a relatively calm opening lap of the race, but it wasn’t long before the safety car made its first appearance of the morning owing to two separate incidents.

The first involved Franco Colapinto, who won Saturday’s sprint race on the road only to be disqualified post-race, as the MP Motorsport driver picked up a puncture from contact with Luke Browning exiting Turn 3 and subsequently crashed at Turn 5.

Later round the lap, Mari Boya was involved in a scary incident at the fast Turn 9-10 complex as he launched off the rear wheel of Nikola Tsolov into the gravel and hit the barriers, although Boya was reportedly able to exit his MP car unaided.

When action resumed, the order at the head of the field remained unchanged until a crash for Ido Cohen exiting Turn 3, the result of contact with Rafael Villagomez, produced the second and final caution of the race just after half-distance.

Gabriel Bortoleto, Gregoire Saucy & Gabriele Mini Podium (Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd)

Saucy continued to apply the pressure on Bortoleto but never got close enough to attempt an overtake, falling short of the win by half a second.

Mini was three seconds behind in third, leading home Fornaroli, sprint race winner Zak O’Sullivan (Prema) and Browning (Hitech), who faces a post-race investigation for his early contact with Colapinto.

Mercedes junior Paul Aron grabbed seventh, while the battle for eighth was decided in favour of Aron’s Prema team-mate Dino Beganovic after last-lap contact with Caio Collet.

From 30th and last on the grid, Pepe Marti (Campos) tore through the field to collect two points for ninth, while the final spot in the top 10 went to Taylor Barnard (Jenzer).

Trident’s Oliver Goethe, second in the points heading to Melbourne, finished down in 22nd after picking up a front-right puncture and pitting for a replacement wheel.

Sprint race polesitter Sebastian Montoya (Hitech) was an early retirement after opening-lap contact with Christian Mansell.

With Goethe failing to score all weekend, Bortoleto now leads the championship by 20 points from Saucy, with Beganovic third, 26 off the leader.

F3 Australia - feature race results (23 laps):

Cla	Driver	Team	Gap	Interval
1	Gabriel Bortoleto	Trident
2	Gregoire Saucy	ART Grand Prix	0.596	0.596
3	Gabriele Minì	Hitech Pulse-Eight	3.032	2.436
4	Leonardo Fornaroli	Trident	3.216	0.184
5	Zak O'Sullivan	Prema Powerteam	3.564	0.348
6	Luke Browning	Hitech Pulse-Eight	4.191	0.627
7	Paul Aron	Prema Powerteam	4.393	0.202
8	Dino Beganovic	Prema Powerteam	8.557	4.164
9	Pepe Martí	Campos Racing	8.738	0.181
10	Taylor Barnard	Jenzer Motorsport	13.589	4.851
11	Christian Mansell	Campos Racing	14.356	0.767
12	Jonny Edgar	MP Motorsport	14.928	0.572
13	Tommy Smith	Van Amersfoort Racing	15.582	0.654
14	Oliver Gray	Rodin Carlin	18.766	3.184
15	Hugh Barter	Campos Racing	19.034	0.268
16	Caio Collet	Van Amersfoort Racing	19.426	0.392
17	Hunter Yeany	Rodin Carlin	19.645	0.219
18	Sophia Flörsch	PHM Racing by Charouz	23.606	3.961
19	Rafael Villagomez	Van Amersfoort Racing	28.676	5.070
20	Alex Garcia	Jenzer Motorsport	30.035	1.359
21	Nikola Tsolov	ART Grand Prix	30.064	0.029
22	Oliver Goethe	Trident	56.084	26.020
23	Nikita Bedrin	Jenzer Motorsport	1 Lap	1 Lap
	Ido Cohen	Rodin Carlin
	Roberto Faria	PHM Racing by Charouz
	Piotr Wiśnicki	PHM Racing by Charouz
	Kaylen Frederick	ART Grand Prix
	Franco Colapinto	MP Motorsport
	Mari Boya	MP Motorsport
	Sebastian Montoya	Hitech Pulse-Eight
View full results