FREDDIE Slater is now just one point away from the Formula 3 Championship lead after scoring his sixth podium this season at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, writes Tori Turner.
Slater, from Stratford-upon-Avon, continues to chase his first victory in the series as he backed up a strong showing at his home race at Silverstone with another podium finish in the sixth round of the series.
The Audi junior repeated his previous qualifying performance, setting a time of 2:05.150 on his first flying lap to take his second consecutive pole position.
However, a nasty shunt involving six of his competitors overshadowed his performance owing to drivers deliberately slowing down on the track which ended the session prematurely.
Slater banged wheels with title rival and current championship leader Ugo Ugochukwu on the opening lap of the reverse-grid sprint race.
The pair were fighting for seventh place before Slater ended up in the barriers and retired from the race.
The 17-year-old polesitter made a slow start off the line in the feature race as he dropped back to third.
He closed the gap to Tuukka Taponen ahead of him and moved into second place on lap seven before executing a similar move on Hiyu Yamakoshi one lap later to retake the lead.
On lap 12, he failed to defend against Red Bull junior Ernesto Rivera, who swiftly passed him for the race-winning overtake.
Shortly after, Yamakoshi moved past him to push Slater down to third, which he held onto for the remainder of the race while dealing with tyre degradation.
Slater scored 15 championship points plus an extra two points for earning pole position.
Title rival Ugochukwu failed to score points across the weekend with Slater just one point behind the American in the standings.
Slater said: “Recently, a few things have not been going quite right that probably cost us getting that first win.
“That’s motorsport at the end of the day and I think we’re doing a really good job in terms of pace at the moment.
“Now we need to just keep converting the points and racking up the points and then see where we end up in a couple of rounds’ time.”
Slater returns to the track in Hungary for the next round of the championship from July 24 to 26.
