F3: Goethe doesn’t believe Sprint penalty is ‘completely fair’

Oliver Goethe admits he feels the penalty he received in the F3 Sprint Race, which handed the victory back to Noel Leon, isn’t “completely fair”.

Formula 3 returned for Round Three of the 2024 season this weekend. However, after a year away from Imola and some track changes, the weekend has proved to be rather chaotic.

The Sprint Race this morning saw limited running under green flag conditions. Four Safety Cars were brought out due to incidents and a Virtual Safety Car was brought out at the end of the race.

It was under the Virtual Safety Car restart that the race victory changed hands. Noel Leon took the race lead from Tim Tramnitz early on, and successfully kept P1 after each full safety car restart. However, when the Virtual Safety Car ended, heading into the final corner, Oliver Goethe had a quicker reaction time. The Campos Racing driver was then able to overtake Leon and saw the chequered flag in first.

Unfortunately for Goethe, he received a five-second penalty for a Safety Car infringement, bumping him back to P2. This handed the victory back to Leon.

After the Sprint Race, Goethe spoke to media, including FormulaNerds, about his race.

An unfair penalty

In the post-race press conference, Goethe was asked about the Safety Cars and his penalty. Speaking on this, he said: “I got a penalty for a Safety Car infringement.

“This was in the last Safety Car, not the Virtual Safety Car, the Safety Car. Once I’d caught Noel and the Safety Car, I was following them and the Safety Car was driving quicker than the delta.

“I was just following them because once you’re with them, you should stay within 10 car lengths and that’s what I did. But I was of course a little below the delta because they were going quicker in front.

“I don’t believe it’s completely fair, I think they are investigating it now. We’ll see what happens but of course, I want the win really badly.”

LAP 18 / 18

HUGE DRAMA!!!! ?

The Virtual Safety Car ends and Ollie Goethe overtakes Noel León to take the race lead, but is handed a 5-second time penalty handing León the race win ?#F3 #ImolaGP pic.twitter.com/qr99K1Fmab

— Formula 3 (@Formula3) May 18, 2024

With all the Safety Cars throughout the Sprint, the F3 grid didn’t get many laps going full throttle and any advantage they previously had disappeared every time the Safety Car came out. Goethe touched on this in the press conference, saying:

“At the start, there’s always a chance and it happened. Every time there is a safety car restart, it’s going onto a long straight where everyone is bunched up again and there’s chaos again, and then another safety car; everyone bunches up, the race gets shorter and shorter and people take more and more risks to get in the points.

“I don’t know what exactly happened but in the first couple of rounds in the championship, we didn’t have many at all, so it was pretty good so far until this race.

“I think there’s nothing we can do; it won’t be like this every race. Maybe Imola there’s more chance of it happening because there’s corners and the straights and you take kerbs. It’s a tricky track for sure.”

Looking ahead to Sunday

After taking a podium in the Sprint, Goethe is positive about his chances in the Feature Race. When asked whether or not starting further towards the front has much of an impact, the Red Bull Junior Driver said:

“Yeah, I think it helps on every track to be honest, but especially here. It there’s going to be more safety cars, it’s better to start more towards the front.

“I’ll be starting in a similar position to what I did today. Today I was sixth, tomorrow seventh, so try to do a similar race. We’ll see to be honest, but if I get a good start like I did today then I can fight towards the front, for sure.”

The F3 Feature Race is tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning UK time. It is a complete Trident lock-out for the top three on the grid tomorrow with Santiago Ramos on pole. Leonardo Fornaroli and Sami Meguetounif line up in P2 and P3.

Headline Image: GettyImages