Tsolov expecting close fight for Pole after topping Spielberg Practice

Nikola Tsolov is happy with how he and Campos Racing started the weekend around the Red Bull Ring. The Bulgarian driver set the fastest time in the opening session of the weekend with a 1:22.015.

It was a stop/start session in Spielberg, with three Red Flags making it difficult to get into a rhythm, but heading into Qualifying later on, that is an aspect Tsolov believes favours him.

“You can never expect anything to go to plan in an F3 Practice session, but considering I felt confident going into the first push, it was better in the end that we did less laps,” he explained afterwards.

“I felt confident in the car, and everything felt good so now I’m looking forward to Qualifying where I think we will make another step forward on our side.”

Drivers had very little time to string together a chain of laps prior to Qualifying without having to return to the pitlane due to the three stoppages.

It made getting a read on the balance of the car difficult, something that has been exasperated by the switch to the Soft compound after running Hard Pirelli tyres in Practice.

The Red Bull Junior Team driver says that having to pre-empt conditions going into Qualifying is part of the game, and the team is well placed to do so after ending up P1 in the morning.

“It’s hard but you’re used to it, and you need to expect to be on it from the first push. What makes it difficult for me is that we were on the Hard tyre but we’ll go onto the Softs for Qualifying.

“So there’s going to be a big balance change and the car’s going to feel different. FP is always sketchy here in terms of car balance, but I think it should look much cleaner in Quali.

“Sometimes it’s a bit of a guessing game, but you just try to get as close as you can get with the experience you have. F1 usually runs before our Quali session so the track changes quite a lot, and with the switch to the Softs, it’s going to be a bit step. We’ll try to anticipate it from past experience, but we’ll see what we can do.”

Tsolov finished over a tenth ahead of title rival and Championship leader, Rafael Câmara. The Bulgarian says that he is expecting a close fight between himself and the TRIDENT driver later on, as he aims to prevent the Brazilian taking a fifth pole in 2025.

He added that he wasn’t surprised to already be battling his rival for the top spot in Practice, and that it boded well for what’s to come later on in Qualifying.

“Qualifying’s always what I’m focused on. It’s the thing that’s most important in an F3 weekend, and we know race pace-wise, we’re fine. As long as we do that one good lap, we can have an easier weekend.

“I was expecting Rafael and myself to be up there in Practice. For me it wasn’t a surprise and I’m expecting similar for Qualifying.”