Zak equals F3 win record with dominant victory in Hungary

by | Jul 25, 2023

Zak equals F3 win record with dominant victory in Hungary

Zak O’Sullivan stormed to his fourth victory of 2023 in Sunday’s FIA Formula 3 Championship feature race, equaling the record for most victories in a season with a dominant display from pole position.

Bouncing back from an unlucky showing at Silverstone, Zak thrust himself back into title contention by qualifying in pole position by over 0.4s – a statement of intent for the three remaining rounds in the championship.

Saturday’s wet-to-dry conditions favored the young Williams Racing Academy driver from Cheltenham, who notably shined at the Hungaroring 12 months ago in his debut F3 season, narrowly missing out on an unlikely victory.

It wasn’t all plain sailing however, as the afternoon’s reverse grid Sprint Race saw the #3 Prema team driver pit for a replacement front wing following damage in battle. With just a handful of laps remaining, Zak charged from 27th to 22nd.

Fortunately for Zak, Sunday’s feature race rewards more than twice the points – and he duly delivered the drive of the season. Starting from first, O’Sullivan covered the inside line heading down into turn one, and never looked back as he set about establishing a gap to the drivers behind.

The 19-lap race proved to be a challenging one with extreme tyre degredation, but Zak managed his pace from the opening laps to keep his rivals over two seconds behind throughout. He executed a flawless drive to take the chequered flag ahead of teammate Dino Beganovic and fellow Williams Racing Academy driver Franco Colapinto.

Speaking after the win, Zak said:

“A really good race, tyre degradation has been really high all weekend, so it was kind of a race of management. As a team we’ve had really good pace all weekend, so I built a gap early on. It got a bit tricky towards the end as the tyres started to fall off, but an awesome weekend for myself and the team with a 1-2. Looking forward to Spa.”