Double podium for Prema as Piastri extends championship lead

The Prema Formula 3 team continued its dominant start to the 2020 season as both Oscar Piastri and Logan Sargeant finished on the podium after Saturday’s feature race at Silverstone.

It was Sargeant who started from pole but quickly slipped back after being passed by Hitech’s Liam Lawson and then teammate Piastri, and that is how the order remained as the race finished under yellow flag conditions following a huge late collision between Lukas Dunner and Oli Caldwell,  the rear end of the Brit’s Trident ripped off in the accident.

“I’m obviously very happy,” said Lawson afterward. “As I said yesterday, we did a lot of work, mainly for Qualifying because that’s where we’re struggling so far this season. It was nice to have a good quali. The race car today was good. I think we definitely need to work on it. I was struggling a little bit towards the end of the race, but it was basically about managing it. We did a lot of prep for this. I’m really happy and proud of the team for all their hard work.”

Victory was Lawson’s second of the season following on from successive DNFs but Renault junior driver Piastri’s second place finish means he extends his championship lead to 18 points from Prema teammate Sargeant with Lawson a further 16 points behind approaching the midway point of the season.

“Liam was quite fast coming onto both DRS straights,” commented Piastri. “I felt that was probably where he was the strongest on the track. That was making my life very difficult. I got a good run on to the Hangar Straight, and it was the best opportunity I had to go to the outside at Stowe. I almost made it work, but it wasn’t quite enough. I had in the back of my head that I didn’t want a shunt there, because we still have another race tomorrow. I didn’t want to throw away all my points for the weekend. It would have been nice to get the win, but it’s still solid points for second.

Jake Hughes was fourth for HWA AG ahead of the third Prema of Frederik Vesti, Alexander Peroni and Sebastian Fernandez as Clement Novalak, David Beckman and Alexander Smolyar rounded out the points scoring finishers.

Fraser Masefield

Sports news and features writer, web editor and author.