Australian Joey Mawson turned challenges into positives during Round Five of the 2018 GP3 Series at the Hungaroring in Budapest, Hungary on the weekend.

The PODIUM-backed driver showed good speed to qualify ninth fastest before slotting into seventh place during the early laps of Race One.

He then pressured Jake Hughes for a number of laps before making several attempts to overtake for sixth position. Unfortunately, during one of these attempts where Mawson was passing on the outside of turn one, the pair made contact damaging the rear suspension on Mawson’s Arden Motorsport entry. This damage forced Mawson out of the race.

Starting from the rear of the grid for Race Two, and passing opportunities around the 4.381km circuit difficult, Mawson and the Arden Motorsport used the race to gain valuable data to assist them in the second half of the season.

Confirming the progress they have made over the past few races was the fact that Mawson was able to set the fastest lap of the race – more than a tenth of a second faster than the race winner.

The young Australian believes that while the outright results didn’t come his way, he and the team made significant steps forward throughout the weekend.

“Despite the circumstances in the opening race that caused me to DNF, we were able to achieve some positive results throughout the weekend,” said Mawson.

“Qualifying ninth was a positive start, then I had good pace and tyre wear in the opening race. After the DNF we made the most of what we could in the final race by setting the fastest lap of the race and having good consistency with our tyre wear.

“We learnt a lot across the weekend that will help us as we head into the second half of the year and can’t wait to get to Spa next month.”

The weekend’s race victories were split between Nikita Mazepin and Dorian Boccolacci.

The next event on the schedule will be at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit on August 25-26.