The Spaniard brought another third-place finish home at the wheel of her Mercantile Campos Racing Tatuus. Lovinfosse and Cáceres scored more points at the antepenultimate event of the 2023 season
Mercantile Campos Racing added another rostrum to their tally at Monza, which hosted the fifth round of the 2023 F1 Academy season, thanks to Nerea Martí. The Spanish female racer rounded out the Italian venue in style with a third place on the rostrum, her fourth podium of the season. Frenchwoman Lola Lovinfosse and Uruguayan Maite Cáceres put themselves into the points-paying positions of the all-female category once again.
After two free practice sessions on Friday, Saturday kicked off with both qualifying sessions in the morning. Martí qualified in seventh place with a lap time of 1m55.012s in Q1. Lovinfosse clocked a lap time of 1m56.909s with Cáceres further adrift. Then, Martí repeated the same place in Q2 with a lap time of 1m53.665s. Lovinfosse set a personal best of 1m54.643s to start from row seven with Cáceres putting together a best lap of 1m55.700s.
Race 1 took place in the afternoon, which consisted of 14 laps. At the start, a crash at the beginning brought the red flag. At the restart, Martí got involved in interesting battles and crossed the finish line in seventh place. Lovinfosse moved up to tenth with Cáceres finishing in 12th. Race 2 saw how Martí was fighting for the podium, in fact the Spaniard ran in the top-three for most of the 10 laps. At the end, Martí finished in 6th place. Cáceres brilliantly moved through the field and took the checkered flag in 8th place, her season’s high so far. Lovinfosse ended up in 13th place after a clash with Jessica Edgar while fighting for a top-5 result.
The meeting came to an end with Race 3 on Sunday. From seventh on the grid, Martí gradually put in a recovery drive and by the halfway point she was already running in fourth place. She put Amna Al Qubaisi under pressure and finally the Spaniard had the upper hand and took the third place. Lovinfosse pushed hard and a seventh place was a valuable reward for her. Cáceres was forced to retire in the closing stages of the race as Chloe Chong crashed into her Tatuus.
After Monza, Martí sits in fifth place of the standings on 115 points. In the same way, Mercantile Campos Racing is fifth in the teams’ standings.
The penultimate race of the series will be held at Paul Ricard on 29-30 July.
