Novalak’s Guest Column: Zandvoort is one of the most spectacular racetracks I've driven on

Scoring podiums in Races 2 and 3, Clément Novalak enjoyed his best weekend to date in Formula 3, departing Zandvoort with 30 points and P3 in the Championship, with one round to go.

The Frenchman takes control of this week’s guest column to pen his thoughts on the penultimate round of the season. He discussed the Teams’ and Drivers’ title fights, explained why he loved Zandvoort and looked ahead to the season finale at the end of September in Sochi.

ONE GOOD POINT – ZANDVOORT WAS UTTERLY BEAUTIFUL

For a start, we managed to score a lot of points and get two podiums this weekend and that was a great feeling, but also to have gone racing at probably one of the most spectacular racetracks that I have raced on in my career.

I have to say, from my point of view, Zandvoort was an utterly beautiful track, and the whole atmosphere of the fans around the circuit was amazing. It was extremely memorable, and I will probably remember this weekend for my whole career.

ONE BAD POINT – DAVID SCHUMACHER’S RACE 3 RETIREMENT

David (Schumacher) unfortunately getting taken out in Race 3. We were on course to score some extremely good points for the Teams' Championship, which is extremely important for all three of us in the team, so that is definitely the worst point of the weekend.

David deserved a really good result, but it was taken away from him. Unfortunately, that’s how racing goes sometimes.

WHAT I LEARNED – ZANDVOORT WAS UNEXPECTEDLY GREAT FOR OVERTAKING

We learned that Zandvoort is actually one of the most exciting tracks to race on. It isn’t only great for a push lap in Qualifying, it is super intense and exhilarating, and good to race on.

Zandvoort proved to be a track that we could overtake on, which not a lot of people expected before the weekend. I think that the races were some of the best ones this year in terms of overtaking and action.

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED – MINE AND VICTOR’S POST-RACE DEBRIEF

I found out this weekend while having a post-race debrief with Victor (Martins) that he enjoys Netflix just as much as I do. We have similar tastes in TV series as well, so that was a funny take from our post-Race 2 debrief.

NEXT TIME OUT – SOCHI

There have been some great points from this weekend and now we need to carry the momentum forwards into Sochi, which is a completely different racetrack.

Sochi is much flatter and has fewer high-speed corners, with more medium to slow speed corners, which will give us some different challenges.

We will be looking to keep up our consistency, as we are quite close to PREMA in the Teams’ Championship and we all know how quickly things can turn around in F3. I hope that my teammates and i can bring it home for Trident.