PREMA’s Zak O’Sullivan is delighted with his “amazing” third win of the 2023 F3 season in Austria.
O’Sullivan entered this round sat eighth in the drivers’ standings with 41 points but a haul of 32 points and Feature Race victory propelled the Brit up to fourth in the standings and 38 points off championship leader, Trident’s Gabriel Bortoleto.
The 18 year-old though had qualified sixth in what he described as “a super close session”, where he was just 0.109 seconds off pole position, although a grid penalty for impeding Tommy Smith dropped him to tenth for the Sprint Race.
O’Sullivan however thought that getting sixth was a positive result amidst several drivers scrapping for position throughout Qualifying to get a clean lap in, as he explained: “It was quite hectic with the traffic, but I managed to get a lap in that was good for P6.”
The Sprint Race however was ran in wet-to-dry conditions but O’Sullivan made a positive start and recovered to seventh on the first lap, before he passed Christian Mansell, Kaylen Frederick and Pepe Marti to finish fourth.
O’Sullivan explained that his strategy was a case of managing his “good” pace and just picking “up a few cars throughout the race and another one on the last lap.”
Dry conditions however allowed O’Sullivan to maximise his tyre management in the Feature Race, as he quickly passed Franco Colapinto at the start before he later benefitted from a collision between Paul Aron and Gregoire Saucy to take third on Lap 11.
Tyre degradation proved decisive as several frontrunners struggled for pace but O’Sullivan put the issue down to having “a slightly different tyre compound and it is the first time we use it on a proper track except for Monaco.”
O’Sullivan proceeded to add that there was just one approach available as he explained: “A lot of the strategy was to feel which axle of the car was going, and even in dirty air, try to counteract that.”
That particular tactic proved successful for O’Sullivan who managed to overtake Bortoleto on the inside line of Turn 3 on Lap 15, from which he held the lead to the checkered flag to improve to fourth heading into his home round – Silverstone.
Post-race, the 18 year-old admitted that he didn’t expect to win as he commented: “Amazing win. I didn’t really expect it, but the pace was really good throughout, and across the board, tyre degradation was quite high.
“I managed to get to the lead and then I was just fighting to stay in front, trying to break the DRS on every lap.”
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