Summarize

South Africa’s Jonathan Aberdein added another rookie podium to his FIA European Formula 3 season logbook at Germany’s Nurburgring weekend, in spite of a trying weekend. Aberdein qualified tenth for race 1 but had to avoid a first lap accident and fell back, before fighting back to eighth. An entertaining second race saw the Capetonian to seventh for that third among the rookies and Jonathan ended 12th in the final race.

“Nurburgring was a challenging weekend, so I am pretty happy with my results,” Jonathan admitted. “There was a chain-reaction shunt in the first race and I had to avoid that so lost a few places, but once the race settled down, I managed to pass a few cars to take eighth. “I was seventh on the race 2 grid — we had quite a few restarts, but once it settled down I enjoyed a huge scrap with a few cars to bring it home seventh and a hard-fought rookie podium.

“I qualified 13th for the final and as it would happen, I finally got the car’s set-up to my liking — it was spot on and I had really good pace, but it was one of those races and all I could do was chip away and finished up 12th, which never quite showed what we achieved.”

There’s now a two week break before the penultimate meeting of the season at Austria’s Red Bull Ring — a circuit Jonathan knows well and has enjoyed success on, in lower formulae. “I’m looking forward to Austria — we are keen to finish the season off in style — bring it on!”