“We finished in the points twice and, alright, one of those were lost and that’s part of the sport, but we managed to put it in the points twice which I think is more than what most people thought we would do this year.”
Heading the charge for PHM was Sophia Floersch, who made a return to Formula 3 after two years away from the Championship. She made great use of her accumulated experience from endurance racing to drive the team forward.
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After losing a point-scoring result following post-race disqualification from the Spielberg Feature Race, her hard work was finally rewarded at Spa-Francorchamps. Keeping a cool head, she made her chance count in torrential conditions to bring home P7 and get the team up and running in Formula 3.
That result lifted PHM to ninth in the Teams’ Standings, a huge moment for the team and a well-deserved reward for their hard work and efforts across the 2023 campaign. Losing the Austrian result was a ‘gut punch’ according to Müller, but a harsh lesson that ultimately proved the team was more than capable of competing for points.
“It was incredibly motivating and a huge gut punch at the same time. It’s just unfortunate because we got the car to a good place, had a good setup, and we went through all the processes, and it was all ok until the wing that was turned up. All that told us was that ok, we still need more processes, there’s still things that we need to do to make sure we don’t lose points over something so stupid again.
“But it was fantastic to see that, on pace, we could produce a car to fight for points. I think that was one of our strengths along with Sophia. Our setups, the tyre windows, we were able to keep going throughout the whole race and not just be quick in Qualifying and then struggling for tyre management. Sophia is pretty good at managing the tyre situation, that’s her background in racing and it was amazing to see that we could make that step, finishing P20-something to getting into and near the points on genuine pace.”
Floersch was the undoubted bright spot for the team on track during their maiden campaign. The German driver was arguably unfortunate to not have been in the points more often. For Müller, her strong performances came as no surprise having witnessed the efforts she made throughout the year.
“She is very professional and very focused on what she wants to achieve. I think it was very clear that she didn’t come here for just a joyride. With her, it’s clear that she wants to prove people wrong, and I think she did prove a lot of people wrong.
“At the beginning of the year, I was surprised to see how much of the public was, let’s say very negative about her getting a drive. Going out of your way to start to insult and berate, having that much backlash on social media, I was just like ‘what is wrong with people?’ It annoyed me in Austria because she deserved those points absolutely. It was heart-wrenching to see her not get them. So, to get them eventually at Spa and her becoming the first woman in the points in F3 proved it can be done. She made the call and said that we should go for wets, and we were totally supportive of her in that situation and said let’s go. So, collecting those points and getting that finish was like a ‘Finally!’ moment.”
With an average finishing position of 23 in the opening Feature Race of the season, that improved to 17 by the end of the year in the Monza Feature. It represents a small but by no means insignificant gain for a team learning the F3 ropes on the job.
By season’s end, Floersch was a constant presence inside the top 20 and fighting on the fringes of the points consistently, no matter the type of track layout.
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"’I'm proud of having scored points and I’m proud of the team who managed to keep their heads down and get all the work done. All the work the mechanics do is underappreciated. Everyone always assumes that the car just magically stands there, is setup correctly where in fact it’s a massive job.
“That’s the area I’ve seen that the F2 and F3 teams are a well-oiled machine, making sure that the cars are ready to go and what that takes in terms of skill and experience to deliver on that level despite the noise around them, that was deeply impressive. I’m really proud of the team and you’ll see a lot of these faces next year because I’ve been absolutely impressed with their work ethic and their attitudes to get stuff done.”
Reference to: https://www.fiaformula3.com/Latest/6i...
Have fun watching!
Filmed and edited by @ThomasMarzusch
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Thanks for watching !!
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SOPHIA
www.sophia-floersch.de
jardier, rfactor 2, iracing, automobilista 2, assetto corsa competizione
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