Australian Joey Mawson has started off his campaign in the 2017 FIA Formula 3 European Championship with a pair of points scoring hauls at the Silverstone circuit in England.
The PODIUM-backed driver started the weekend by qualifying ninth, 11th and 13th for the three races respectively.
Mawson put in a sterling drive in the opening encounter that saw him record a fifth place finish.
In Race Two, Mawson appeared to again be on the charge from his 11th starting position to be challenging for sixth place within the opening few laps. Unfortunately by mid race, his Van Racing Amersfoort Dallara began to suffer from tyre degradation, and his lap times suffered as a consequence. Despite fighting gallantly to hold onto positions, he would eventually drop to 11th at the chequered flag.
Race three once again saw Mawson make some impressive gains in the opening few laps to move up five places into eighth spot. He then fended off a challenge by his team-mate Harri Newey for several laps before eventually pulling clear and recording his second championship points for the weekend.
“Over the whole weekend we struggled as a team with the pace but I’m quite satisfied that I got the most out of the car that I could have,” said Mawson.
“To record a top five result in my first weekend as a rookie in F3 is very satisfying but we need to unlock the key to the outright speed across all three races.
“We didn’t go backwards in the races and if it wasn’t for the tyre degradation in race two, I would have been able to get three top ten finishes. However we didn’t have the pace of the front-runners, and we’ll be working hard to analyse the data over the next two weeks before Monza to improve.”
With three different race winners across the weekend, Race Two winner Joel Eriksson leads the Championship on 55 points ahead of Callum Illot (43) and Lando Norris (42). Mawson is seventh on 14 points.
The next event on the schedule is in two weeks time (April 29-30) at Monza, Italy.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS (After Round 1 of 10)
1. Joel Eriksson – 55 points
2. Callum Illott – 43
3. Lando Norris – 42
4. Maximilian Günther – 39
5. Jake Dennis – 38
6. Jake Hughes – 15
7. Joey Mawson – 14
8. Jehan Daruvala – 13
9. Mick Schumacher – 12
10. Guanyu Zhou – 12