The pair showed flashes of competitive pace across the Belgian Grand Prix weekend but faced an uphill battle after a rain-affected qualifying session left them deep in the field for both races.
Sharp and Wharton were among the first drivers onto the circuit as rain began falling on Friday, with Prema anticipating conditions would deteriorate as the session progressed.
Sharp initially went fastest before Wharton moved ahead of his teammate, but both were disadvantaged by running without a slipstream at the front of the field.
Freddie Slater ultimately claimed pole with a 2m05.150s before worsening rain prevented further improvements and a multi-car collision brought the session to an early conclusion.
Sharp ended the session 14th with a 2m06.027s, while Wharton qualified further back after recording a 2m06.222s.
Both drivers were then handed three-place grid penalties for driving unnecessarily slowly on the racing line during their preparation laps, dropping Sharp to 17th and Wharton outside the top 20.
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Sharp believed the result did not reflect the speed available from his car.
“In terms of driving and the car, the potential was really there, I think we could have been in the top three or top five, but having no slipstream was what cost us today,” Sharp said.
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“In hindsight it’s easy to say what we could have done differently, but in the moment it seemed like the right call.
“So just a bit of a bit of a shame, I think we could’ve been right up there today, the potential was there.”
Wharton also felt Prema had more pace than its starting positions suggested but acknowledged he had not delivered his strongest qualifying performance.
“I feel like the car was quite good, and just a lot of factors made the result not what it should be,” Wharton said.
“So will be two long races and need to try and overtake, which we can here, and get some points,”
Sharp made immediate progress when the sprint race began on Saturday, completing several passes around the outside through Eau Rouge as he climbed from 17th.
However, two Safety Car periods restricted the amount of green-flag running and reduced his opportunities to continue moving forward.
The New Zealander crossed the line 13th after gaining four positions, narrowly missing the points as Japanese driver Jin Nakamura claimed his maiden F3 victory.
“I think we had good pace, we showed some good speed but with all the all the safety cars and not many racing laps it was hard to make much of a difference so hoping for a cleaner race tomorrow and to limit the safety cars if that’s possible,” Sharp said.
Wharton also made progress from his starting position and initially crossed the line 16th, although post-race penalties for track limits dropped the Australian to 27th in the final classification.
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“Obviously starting outside top 20 makes it difficult to make up lots of places and a lot of safety cars during a short race makes it tough but looking forward to tomorrow,” Wharton said.
Both drivers gained places during Sunday’s feature race but were again unable to reach the points as Prema struggled with tyre degradation.
Sharp made another strong start before his rear tyres began to deteriorate early in the race, while a flat spot and graining on his front-left tyre further limited him during the closing laps.
“It was a bit of a difficult race for us, we had a good first lap and made up a few positions, but just overall struggled for pace today and had a lot of rear deg quite early on in the race,” Sharp said.
“Then the front left fully, fully went at the end, I got a big flat spot and was graining a lot too, so it was difficult and it was hard to fight at the end.”
Sharp was classified 16th, one position ahead of Wharton, as Ernesto Rivera charged from fourth on the grid to claim the feature race victory ahead of Hiyu Yamakoshi and Slater.
Wharton said Prema had extracted what it could from the feature race but lacked the pace required to make substantial progress through the field.
“We maximised what we could on Sunday, but still the pace wasn’t quite there to come through and we also had a lot of tyre degradation today too,” Wharton said.
“It’s been our first tough weekend in a while, so we need to take the learnings from this weekend and just move forward to next week in Budapest where the team was super fast last year and hopefully we can keep that going.”
Sharp was similarly frustrated that Prema had been unable to convert its underlying speed into a stronger result.
“We’ve got positives to take from the weekend as a whole, but it’s just a shame we weren’t able to capitalise on any of it,” he said.
Wharton now sits 17th in the drivers’ standings on 19 points, with Sharp two places behind in 19th on 17 points.
Prema retains eighth in the teams’ standings on 37 points, while Ugo Ugochukwu and Campos Racing remain at the top of the respective championships.
The Formula 3 season continues at the Hungaroring this weekend.
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