Robert Shwartzman secures third victory of the Formula 3 season in Race 1 in Italy

7 September 2019/ smp

SMP Racing driver Robert Shwartzman won the Saturday race of the seventh FIA Formula 3 round, which takes place on September 6-8 in Italy at the Monza circuit.

Robert started from eighth position, but by the seventh lap, he overtook six rivals ahead and moved up to second place. On the fifteenth lap, Shwartzman passed his Prema Racing teammate Marcus Armstrong, who was leading the race then, and kept first place to the finish line. The Russian also drove the fastest lap in the race of 1: 40.057.

The SMP Racing driver increased his lead in the overall standings - now he is ahead of his closest pursuer by 35 points: 179 for Robert Shwartzman against 144 for Jehan Daruvala.

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“After a difficult qualifying, I was ready to fight and we had a very good race,” SMP Racing driver Robert Shwartzman said. “We knew that in Monza it was possible to overtake, so the task was to drive calmly and overtake my rivals if there was a possibility for that. And I did everything according to our plan – by the middle of the race I was already second, driving behind my teammate. At the restart, I was afraid that there would be some risky moments, but everything went well. After two laps, when the DRS was allowed, I got close to Marcus Armstrong. He decided to let me pass, apparently, to stay in a slipstream behind my car and use DRS himself. And I am very pleased that my car allowed me to build a gap away from him and keep the distance large enough so that Marcus could not attack me. At the end of the race, a safety car appeared on the track due to an accident. Thank God, Alex Peroni, the driver of that car, was not injured, as the accident was serious. I am very glad that starting from eighth place I managed to win and we scored very important points for the championship. Tomorrow we have another race, and it’s important to start as well as we did today and score as many points as possible.”

Race 2 of the seventh FIA Formula 3 round will take place on Sunday, September 8 at 09:30 Local time.
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