Thoughts from Colapinto, Martins and Crawford

FIA Formula 3: Many congratulations to the top three finishers of the FIA Formula 3 Sprint Race here at Imola. In third place, Jak Crawford for PREMA, in second place Victor Martins for ART Grand Prix, and taking his first win in FIA Formula 3, our winner Franco Colapinto for Van Amersfoort Racing. Many congratulations, Franco. You started on pole, and you won the race. But those facts alone don't tell the whole story, do they? What a dramatic race it was.

Franco Colapinto: Yeah, I mean just so happy, so proud of all of the effort behind this win. The team did an amazing job, and I'm just so happy about our performance here. Of course, we struggled a little bit yesterday in qualifying and that's why we started on pole in the reverse grid. But the pace in the race was really, really strong. Caio overtook me in the beginning because we were struggling a bit with tyres, but then as soon as they switched on we had a really good pace until the end of the race and that's what gave me the win in the end. I stayed in his DRS like Victor did to me in Bahrain, and in the end, I had better tyres him and I could attack him in the last few laps, which was good. I was a bit scared of all the Virtual Safety Cars and the Safety Cars and I thought they were not going to let me have an opportunity to fight with him. Luckily, it went our way, and we won the race. I’m just so happy for everyone. You know the support of my country of Argentina was amazing over these last few weeks since Bahrain and I'm just so proud for all of the effort, for all of the support that everyone is giving me, and I hope to continue like this in the next few races.

FIA Formula 3: And this is Van Amersfoort’s first win as well. Knowing the guys and girls as you do, just give us an idea of what this means to the team as well?

Colapinto: No, no, it's massive and honestly it's quite unbelievable, our third ever race in F3, second weekend, and we are really in P1 in this race. I mean it's just on another level, you know all the teams here in F3 are so competitive, the drivers are some of the best in the world and honestly, to be here, it's really good and I'm just proud of everyone. And yeah, they compete with all these competitive teams that have so much experience with the car, with the tracks, they have been racing with the same car for four years and we have very little information, very little data and we have to try to be quick as possible up to speed. And sometimes it's a bit tricky, but at the moment we are doing it quite well.

FIA Formula 3: Certainly quite well! You're doing brilliantly, well done Franco. Great win for you. Victor. Coming to you now. Sixth on the grid to second. How did you do that?

Victor Martins: To be honest I got, I would say, a bit lucky with the incident at the start of the last lap. But I will say all the race I struggled a bit with the tyres and with the balance. Every time I had an opportunity like the restart, I wanted to be a right on it. To take the opportunity, to overtake someone. It's what I have done, so I'm pretty happy about what I did. And then I was, a bit managing my tyres and I wasn't feeling like confident to attack someone or to gain position, so I just wanted to stay where I was. Then yeah, in the last lap, I got the two positions because of the incident, but I think it's important points for the championship because for sure we'll have a strong car. I think we will work hard this afternoon to be back stronger tomorrow and in the future.

FIA Formula 3: Talk us through car set up, with all of the rain yesterday in the shortened sessions. How difficult was it to find the right set-up?

Martins: Obviously, what happened yesterday on the wet and on the drying track you cannot really learn something for today, so I think you just come with your base from the past years and from Bahrain. But again, we have the medium this weekend so it changed a bit the approach of the driver also. So, in the end, yeah, it's just to put the base that we know and then try to fine-tune for tomorrow for example.

FIA Formula 3: OK, thank you, Victor. Jack coming to you, now. Tremendous to see you on the podium at ninth to third you had to work for that one didn’t you?

Jak Crawford: Yeah, it was a really good race at the beginning there was a lot of battling going on, so it was difficult to overtake because everyone had DRS and then sooner or later I got into sixth, and it was a lot of Safety Cars. Huge, huge mess. There was always something happening behind me or in front of me. I said we got a bit lucky to get into third by the end. But the pace was absolutely insane. We were so quick, especially in the second half of the race. So yeah, I'm really confident in the car for tomorrow.

FIA Formula 3: Now you've said that you like Imola. What is it about this race track?

Crawford: It's just a really fun track to drive at. It's an old school track. You can be all over the curbs. It's really high speed, and yeah, I just really love to drive here so.

FIA Formula 3: Brings out the best in you?

Crawford: Yeah, I would say so!

FIA Formula 3: Well done to you as well.