PREMA’s Zak O’Sullivan is delighted to finish the 2023 F3 season as vice-champion, after a “classic” season finale at Monza, Italy.
O’Sullivan had entered the season finale sat fourth in the standings but endured a difficult start to the weekend with a 17th-placed finish in Practice, before he rebounded to seventh in Qualifying which saw three separate red flag incidents.
Speaking post-Qualifying, the 18 year-old described the session as a mess despite feeling pleased with sixth position, as he explained: “It was a really messy session, there was only one lap for everyone.
“My lap wasn’t bad, a bit of traffic here and there. Really good position to score points for both races, which is really important.”
The Sprint however saw O’Sullivan make progress from seventh on the reverse-grid as he climbed to third until he accidentally made contact with Gregoire Saucy at Variante del Rettifilo on Lap 10, which gave the Swiss driver a puncture and dropped him down the order.
Stewards consequently handed O’Sullivan a 10-second time penalty which ultimately saw him classified 11th after he finished fifth on the road in what he described as “a tricky race”, where battles close behind him saw the Brit slip out of the points.
Franco Colapinto’s Sprint victory also struck a further blow to O’Sullivan’s hopes of finishing as vice-champion, as the Argentinean and fellow Williams F1 junior climbed to second in the standings ahead of the Feature Race.
O’Sullivan however struck lucky in the season climatic race as he overcame four safety car periods to finish second in an all-British podium, despite having reacted slowly to MP Motorsport’s Jonny Edgar on the last lap restart to cost him a shot at victory by 0.287 seconds.
Reflective upon his Feature Race performance, O’Sullivan commented: “Kind of a classic Monza race today. Second in the feature race from P6 and great to seal the team’s championship.
“The pace today was quite good throughout and it was nice to make progress especially on each safety car restart until the last one where I was trying to hold the position a bit.”
Colapinto and Pepe Marti meanwhile retired from the race despite having started the season finale ahead of him in the standings, whilst his PREMA teammat – Paul Aron only finished seventh which handed O’Sullivan the vice-champion title ahead of Aron.
O’Sullivan’s second-placed finish also secured PREMA the teams’ title ahead of Trident by 19 points, which he believes capped “quite a good season,” during which he and the team “made the most of the situations where we could.”
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