PACE AND PENALTIES AT THE HUNGARORING

It was a weekend of two halves for Josh Dufek in Budapest, where the team made significant improvements in performance unfortunately Josh’s efforts were thwarted by technical turmoil. Despite drawbacks, the Austrian driver managed to find positives in a difficult weekend and chalked it up to valuable experience in his young racing career. 

Just a stones throw from the city of Budapest the 4.831KM Hungaroring circuit twists and turns in undulating nature, providing a tricky challenge for drivers who have to battle the tyre degradation which can make or break a race. Having made progress last time out, Josh and the AIX Racing squad were confident going into the weekend. With the Budapest circuit notoriously difficult for overtaking, Josh had a clear goal of earning himself a strong starting position when qualifying got underway on Friday.Promising pacePositive momentum appeared to be in Josh’s favour as the first laps were laid down in the qualifying session he set the initial pace with a rapid opening lap that remained in place for much of the session. Heading up a 1-2-3 for the AIX Racing squad it was clear that their pace had indeed turned a corner. With the session curtailed early due to a Red Flag, Josh was unable to set one final lap to improve his time and settled for P6 which was still his best performance to date in the championship, outqualifying both teammates by two-tenths in the process.

“I’m happy with that session, it’s our best results so far and what we’ve been chasing for some time. So I’m pleased finally got to show what we can do. I do think the car was good enough to fight for pole, however I had a bit of a lock up on my 2nd lap so I wasn’t able to improve there and if we were able to get a lap in before the red flag we could have been further forward.Starting from P6 for both races is a good starting point and we can definitely fight from there”

Painful penalty

Regrettably for the Austrian, his efforts were found to be in vain as it was found that his AIX Racing #28 car had been below the minimum weight required, contravening Art. 5.1 of the FIA Formula 3 Championship Technical Regulations. As a result he was disqualified from qualifying for reasons beyond his own control, forcing him to start each race from the back of the grid.

Disappointed but not deterred, Josh put his head down to make the most of a difficult turn of luck. During the Sprint race, he managed to make some progress, navigating through the field and gaining positions up to P26 as the safety car made its first appearance of the race. He advanced to P24 at the safety car restart and further benefited on lap 5 as his rivals served penalties. Focusing on tyre management, Josh ultimately made up eight places overall, crossing the line in P22.

Forward Focus

Battling early on Sunday morning, the Austrian driver set his sights on making up ground where possible, but also collecting valuable race data ahead of his comeback next weekend out. Josh used his experience to not to take any unnecessary risks during the frenetic start. Expertly staying out of trouble as the pack rolled through the opening turn, his patience paid off and he had the better line into Turn 2 and picked up 3 places. With, he dispatched Montoya and made up ground to pass Floersch in as many laps.

With the pack battling tyre degradation earlier than anticipated, they were all forced to focus on nursing tyres as the race settled in. Crossing the line in P22 saw the conclusion of a challenging rollercoaster weekend for the talented young rookie.

“Overall a very frustrating weekend to be honest. We did a good job in qualifying and from my side I did everything I could do and just when we were making positive steps forward it was taken away. From then on we were really on the back foot again for the rest of the weekend.""Overtaking is really difficult at this track and unless you really have a good run you’re unable to make the overtake work. I managed to make up ground in the races, but I really had to look after the tyres too so we weren’t able to fight as well as we probably could’ve done. In the Feature Race we opted to try out a few things that hopefully we can take forward into Spa.”

With renewed fire and determination to make up for his misfortune, Josh will be back on track in just a few days time at Spa-Francorchamps for the penultimate round of the 2024 season.