Valtteri Bottas finished third in Macau's prestigious F3 Grand Prix.

The Asian year-ending trip of Prema Powerteam to Macau ended with an highly-rewarding third place finish today on the Guia circuit. The team’s three drivers managed to score top-10 spots in Qualifying 2, before Valtteri Bottas, Roberto Merhi and Daniel Juncadella handed to the Italian squad led by Team Principal Angelo Rosin some more good reasons to celebrate.

In a great proof of strength and expertise, Bottas clocked the second fastest lap in qualifying, despite making slight contact with the wall and being forced to the pits for repairs. In the only clean lap he had available, the Finnish racer clocked the 2nd fastest lap of the day and grabbed a spot on the front row for race day. Merhi ended up in 6th, while Daniel Juncadella, on his debut at the World’s toughest venue, scored 8th place.

On the Qualifying Race, Bottas scored 4th place, as he slightly missed some speed compared to the Signature Racing drivers that dominated the top-3. Mehri drove an aggressive race before hitting the barriers and finishing in 22nd, while Juncadella stayed into the top-10 until checkered.

Roberto Merhi charged from 22nd to 8th.

At the end of the Grand Prix race, Bottas cruised to a third place finish. Merhi completed a sensational comeback from 22nd to 8th, while Juncadella had to retire following to a first place crash.

Angelo Rosin – Team Principal
“We’re leaving Macau with our heads held high, with the great third-place trophy taken by Bottas and aware of having fought for the top spots all the time. We went on top in practice, and we took a front row spot with him. Mehri had the chance to be part of the game, but paid the price of a late Qualifying Race mistake. It’s been a pity for Juncadella. His weekend’s results didn’t do justice to him, because despite being at his Macau debut, he performed great and kept constantly among the leading pack.”

Valtteri Bottas is only in his third season in cars but has already managed to win no less than 23 races in his 53 race starts. Last year he won both the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and the Northen European Cup.

Full race results of the Masters of Formula 3.

After the qualifying sesson was over the Motopark drivers occupied the top five positions with British driver Adrian Quaife-Hobbs grabbing the pole position, 3 tenths ahead of Antonio Felix da Costa from Portugal. Best non-Motopark driver in qualifying was Daniel Aho for Koiranen Bros who ended up in seventh of the grid, but no less than 1.681 seconds off the pace of the pole sitter.

21 cars line up for race one and it ended up being a lights to flag victory for Quaife-Hobbs who was 8 seconds ahead of Felix da Costa in second and Kevin Magnussen in third after the 16 laps were completed.

The second race of the weekend had more drama as the top eight from race one started in reversed order on the grid. Race one winner Quaife-Hobbs misjudged the early braking of the slightly slower cars ahead of him and ran into the back of his team mate Kevin Magnussen in the first corner damaging his front wing and dropping to ninth. Depsite a lack of downforce from the damaged wing he fought his way up to fifth before a tyre burst and forced a pitstop for a new tyre and a new nose. At the front it was last year’s championship runner up Antonio Felix da Costa who took the win in front of the two Danes Kevin Magnussen and Marco Sørensen.

Antonio Felix da Costa leads the championship after the Zandvoort round ahead of Kevin Magnussen, Marco Sørensen, Adrian Quaife-Hobbs and Toomas Heikkinen.

The next two races are at Hockenheim at the end of April.

Motopark Academy will also field a second car for a so-far unannounced driver.

Jules Bianchi, France
Jules Bianchi – the “old guy” of the team. 19-year-old Jules made his Formula 3 debut last year and ended up third in the Euro Series and won the F3 Masters at Zolder. His first single seater season was in 2007 when he won the French Formula Renault 2.0 championship. In 2006, during his final karting year he finished second in the World Cup in Formula A and was the WKS International champion in the ICC class.

Adrien Tambay, France
Patrick Tambay’s son Adrien Tambay will make his F3 debut this year. He’s been racing Formula BMW exclusively since he left karting and was fourth in his rookie season in 2007 in the German ADAC championship. This year he finished third in the European Formula BMW championship.

Esteban Gutierrez, Mexico
Esteban Gutierrez comes also from the Formula BMW domains where he became the 2008 European Formula BMW champion.

Valtteri Bottas, Finland
Bottas was a winning machine in 2008 where he raced in both the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and in the Northern European Cup. In the NEC he won 12 of 14 races and in the Eurocup he won another five races on his way to become champion in both championships. Valtteri Bottas win record to date is at an impressive 22 wins in 48 career races.

My money is on an ART driver as 2009 F3 Euro Series champion…