Collet frustrated despite one of his best results of the season at Silverstone

3 July 2022

Caio Collet was left feeling frustrated after the FIA Formula 3 Feature Race despite securing his second-best result of the 2022 season. The Brazilian was fighting for the podium places but lost out late-on to Oliver Bearman, who took third position in the latter stages.

Collet had been targeting a big points haul from the Silverstone weekend but said despite earning 12 points for his work on Sunday, his result could and should’ve been better.

Speaking after the race, the MP Motorsport driver said that there wasn’t much else he could have done to prevent the loss of position.

“It was a decent result. I don’t think we could have done much better with what we had today. It was a decent race, but I think Oliver (Bearman) was really quicker than me, pretty much attacking me the whole race. At one point I did a small mistake on the exit of the chicane and then he was close enough that I had to defend in sector one so he had an opportunity in Turn 6. He did a good job.

“I think that juts came from the lack of pace we had today in the Feature Race. We were missing that pace to keep up and attack the guy in front.”

With a short turnaround between Silverstone and Spielberg, Collet says the team has to be quick in getting on top of its issues that hampered both the Sprint and Feature Races.

Collet admitted that the race pace since the first round of the season had been lacking, though the team was still trying to identify where specifically it was losing out to rivals and get back in the fight for podiums and victories.

“It’s something that we need to look at but from Qualifying to the races, we lost quite a bit of performance. In Qualifying, we were really strong and in the race pace we were ok I would say, but we need to push and find something because since Bahrain we’ve not really been strong either. We need to find that little bit more. I’m quite happy overall with the weekend, it was a decent one. Fighting at the top in the Feature Race is what we wanted to do but now we need to do a step to find an extra few tenths to win the race.

“I think the Feature Race was probably my best result of the year which is a positive but still it’s disappointing because I think we missed out on a good opportunity today. We need to keep working.”

Thankfully for the Brazilian, the Red Bull Ring is one of his favourite circuits on the calendar, and he’s optimistic that another positive result is on the cards next weekend in Austria.

“It was a track that I was quite good at last year. I think I managed to do well in Qualifying, top four if I’m remembering. So I’ve had good results there and hopefully we can do it again this year, maybe on the podium again in the Feature Race.”