Alpine Junior driver Gabriele Mini earned a second consecutive Monaco win as he won the Feature race to elevate to the top of the Formula 3 Drivers’ Championship.
Mini withstood race-long pressure from ART Grand Prix’s Christian Mansell in a Monaco race littered with Safety Cars to end as the eighth winner in the 2024 season.
The Italian made a strong start in his Prema to maintain the lead into Sainte Devote, stopping Mansell from mounting a charge to lead the entire field through the hill.
Generating sufficient heat in the rubber in the morning breeze was proving to be an issue and that resulted in a first-lap pile-up at the hairpin that neutralised the race.
Piotr Wisnicki pushed Charlie Wurtz to the barrier at Portier, leading to the Briton enduring a premature exit as his Jenzer Motorsport car was lodged against the wall.
Marshals raced to recover Wurz’s car under a Safety Car period, while Wisnicki was handed a 10-second penalty for causing the clash with the Jenzer representative.
Mini returned the pack to green flag racing on the third lap, but his attempts to emerge clear and control the pace were thwarted as Mansell applied intense pressure.
Luke Browning was remaining in the fight in third, as PHM Racing driver Nikita Bedrin was made to retire on Lap 5 after Nikola Tsolov clipped him at the Loews hairpin.
Rodin’s Joseph Loake completed a fine move when he dived down Mari Boya’s inside at Rascasse on Lap 7 to pass the Campos Racing car and take seventh position.
The top two drivers were beginning to open a margin over the rest in the hunt for the win, with Hitech driver Browning now situated three seconds back from Mansell.
Mansell, meanwhile, was continuing to circulate within Mini’s DRS range, but the Italian was soaking up the pressure and not providing his rival with a passing chance.
Further back, the fight to land the final point was getting heated as ART’s Laurens van Hoepen failed with a lunge at Turn 5 on Noel Leon, who maintained the position.
Next time around, some debris flew from Alex Dunne’s MP Motorsport car out the tunnel, while the next lap saw Loake sustain a huge lock-up at the Nouvelle chicane.
Boia would capitalise on Loake’s mistake to seize seventh place down the start-finish straight on Lap 15 as Rodin strived to ensure its driver avoided being penalised.
Van Hoepen dived to Leon’s inside at the hairpin on Lap 15 and this time took 10th place, while Mini had begun to up the pace and had opened up a lead over Mansell.
Elsewhere, Martinius Stenshorne was hit with a 10-second time drop for leaving the track and gaining an advantage on Lap 1, dropping him down the bunched-up grid.
Mini’s advantage would be slashed on Lap 20 as the Safety Car returned. Sami Meguetounif had turned wide into Mirabeau and took Leon and Nikola Tsolov with him.
Meguetounif retired from the race as the field was bunched back up, with Tsolov penalised 10 seconds as he was assessed to have failed to leave Leon enough room.
The restart on Lap 23 would witness Tim Tramnitz, who registered a podium in the truncated Sprint encounter, went around Loake’s outside at the hairpin to take ninth.
Loake would be under pressure from van Hoepen behind next but the Dutchman clattered the barriers at Tabac in his chase, bringing the Safety Car out for a third time.
The ART Grand Prix driver had attempted to squeeze around the outside going into Tabac but there was not enough room and his race ended on the spot with damage.
The intervention set up a one-lap shootout, which saw Mini retain his lead to earn back-to-back Formula 3 Feature race victories in Monaco, with Mansell close behind.
Browning seized the final podium place, with Arvin Lindblad missing out on making it two Prema drivers on the rostrum. Leonardo Fornaroli in fifth lost his points lead.
Dino Beganovic managed an exhaust issue during the race but managed to nurse his Prema home to sixth, with Boia, Tramnitz, Loake and Oliver Goethe in the top 10.
