Mansell will start today’s race second behind pole-sitter Gabriele Mini, having topped his qualifying group on Friday.
With 30 cars, Formula 3 is split in half for qualifying in an attempt to minimise the likelihood and impact of red flags.
The top qualifier in the faster of the two groups takes pole, with the second fastest driver in that group getting third.
The field then zippers together with the fastest driver from Group 2, in this case Mansell, taking second place on the grid.
It’s the best qualifying performance of the young Australian’s his F3 career, and a prime opportunity to become a race winner in Monaco.
With clear track ahead of him into Sainte Devote, and given overtaking is near impossible beyond the race start, Mansell has admitted he’ll adopt an aggressive approach.
“Honestly, it’s probably the only point on the track that you’re probably going to get full send,” he admitted when asked about his approach by Speedcafe.
“We all want to win this race more than each other, and more than we’d ever like to admit to each other’s faces.
“You watch on TV as a kid, winning Monaco is such an electric feeling.
“Of course, I’m going to go balls to the wall and T1!”
The Formula 3 Feature race is scheduled for 27 laps, without pit stops, on Sunday morning.
And while the start is a critical moment, and arguably the best opportunity to make up ground, Mansell is aware that he also needs to survive to the chequered flag.
In Saturday’s Sprint race, he was an opening lap retirement after starting buried in the pack – a result of a reverse top 12 for that encounter.
“There’s also a point of being smart,” Mansell admitted.
“Being smart comes at Lap 15, when you’re trying to manage your tyres.
“If the opportunity was for me to go down the inside or around the outside of Gabriele to get the move done, I’m not just going to think, ‘ah, might just wait and see by Lap 20’, I’m going to take the opportunity and see what works out.”
The key, he reasons, is to continue to look forward rather than trying to simply defend and maintain position.
“Maybe Luke [Browning, who will start third] chops me up and then goes into P2, and then I stay in P3,” Mansell hypothesised.
“You have to take a certain amount of risk just to see what happens because then, if you don’t, the likelihood of P4 then trying to come through and then screw you over is even more.
“So you do have to take a calculated risk, but at the end of the day, you can’t also just go flat into T1 and just hope that they get out of the way because they’re not [going to].”
The Formula 3 Feature race begins at 08:00 local time (16:00 AEST).
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