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Jenzer Motorsport’s Spa heroics rewarded with Mecachrome Best Team Strategy Award
There was no shortage of memorable moments across the 2023 Fia Formula 3 season, but there was one historic performance that stood out. The penultimate round in Spa-Francorchamps was all about making the right call and Jenzer Motorsport and their trio of rookies certainly did that.
With the Belgian circuit left slippery after a pre-Feature Race downpour, nobody was quite sure which way to go with their tyre choices. However, the Swiss team were firm in their belief to stick with the wet-weather tyres, a choice that saw them become the recipient of the Mecachrome Best Team Strategy Award.
Benefitting from the superior grip early on, Taylor Barnard breezed into the lead following Paul Aron’s pit stop behind the early Safety Car. With five laps to go, the Briton put together an expert defence from Christian Mansell and secured not only his first F3 win, but the team’s first since Yuki Tsunoda’s 2019 victory.
Barnard wasn’t the only one to benefit from the call for wet tyres, with teammate Nikita Bedrin joining him on the podium, whist Alejandro García capped off the day with his maiden points in fourth.
Following on from the Prize Giving Ceremony, we caught up with Team Principal Andreas Jenzer to dive into the details of that fateful day.
“Already on the race weekend and afterwards, we understood that we had given it 100% effort and that we had made 100% out of the weekend because it’s very difficult to get a weekend better than we got it,” he began.
“From the engineers, their decisions were spot on and I’m very proud and happy about this. Still, it was also a very difficult race for the drivers. They had to manage the difficult conditions, which they did very well and none of them made any mistakes throughout the weekend. The drivers together with the decision of the team did a fantastic job.
“Already from Saturday’s experience, we were thinking of going to the wet tyres. But when we went on the track down to the pits, the drivers weren’t on wet tyres. They went on slicks because everybody was on slicks, but immediately when they arrived there, we told the drivers to see about the track conditions.
“It was a one-to-one conversation between the driver and their engineer. We didn’t have to convince any driver or engineer; they made their choice together and there was no doubt about the choice to go on the wet tyres.
“I think with all the results we started to see from the middle of the season, they were all rookie drivers and they had to start to learn about the team and work to get the trust together. From the middle of the season, there were 100% trust from the drivers to the mechanics, from the drivers to the engineers and from the engineers to the drivers.
“Everything came together with this fantastic result! Obviously, with rookie drivers it’s always a bit harder to achieve these kinds of results, but everybody’s trust and them working hard together – it's a big, big achievement for Jenzer Motorsport.”