Emotions run high

Following the tragic events in Belgium, the three teams who had cars involved in the crash (Arden, Sauber Junior team and Trident) were only running one car, which meant Boschung was sitting this round out. Meanwhile, Japanese driver Marino Sato replaced Maini at Campos for the remainder of the season.

Practice: Dry

It was a bit damp on track, but still classified as a dry session. Despite this, Zhou and Ghiotto did their installation laps on wet tyres and were subsequently under investigation, although nothing seemed to come of it except a chat with an FIA guy.

We were treated to a track guide from Luca Ghiotto, which sounded more like a series of terrifying instructions rather than information on various corners. While Latifi described his chances of winning the championship as “not impossible”, which clearly demonstrated his confidence. 

Despite the constant reminders that F2 only gets 45 minutes of practice each weekend, not like the F1 luxury of several hours, clearly no one cares for practice time as the session was pretty slow. With only 17 minutes to go it was also clear that no one was doing competitive times because Raghunathan was in third. They did, however, all hurry out at the end. Ghiotto was fastest with De Vries and Delétraz in second and third. 

Qualifying: Wet

As the qualifying session began it was actually wet, although apparently not wet enough for full wet tyres, and in the absence of intermediates in F2, that meant everyone was sliding about out on slicks (apart from Calderón who gave the wets a bit of a go, but to no avail).

The track seemed to be getting drier as the session went on, and the times just kept dropping, which made for some fast-paced excitement. Ilott was on provisional pole, with Zhou and Mazepin in second and third. Then ten minutes in Matushita, who had been doing well, beached himself in the gravel trap, bringing out the red flag. Carlin boss Trevor Carlin was pretty pleased, “we’re screwed basically”.

A few minutes after the green flag was waved and Calderón was stranded on track, facing the wrong way. Red flag again. Sato managed his spin under the red flag, which showed some quality driving skills. 

Once the session was restarted, they all headed out tentatively to slide around the track some more. Alesi spun on his out lap, but managed to keep going. Sette Câmara made a mistake, De Vries nearly lost it, Schumacher missed a corner, Alesi got it wrong again, as did Gelael. Ghiotto couldn’t slow down enough to get round a corner. Latifi even got a warning about cutting corners, although I’m not sure how in control of that he was. No one could improve (which was good news for Matsushita, watching from the sidelines, and might have helped save him from the wrath of Trevor Carlin).

With one minute to go it seemed like those last over the line would be able to capitalise on a drying track and improve their times, but still no. It was raining in sector two, scuppering everyone’s chances. Ilott took his first pole, after threatening it so many times during the season.

De Vries couldn’t even make it back to the pits, he ran out fuel and had to pull over to the side of the track, subsequently resulting in him being disqualified from the session as he wasn’t able to provide a fuel sample. He would have to start in a position determined by the stewards, which was last place.

It was very mixed emotions for Callum Ilott, as he said his first pole was very special, but equally being the only one in the team after Correa’s accident in Belgium left him in hospital, made it very empty in the garage.

Feature Race: Dry again

Just to add some tension to proceedings, it’s important to note that this was possibly Latifi’s last chance to revive his championship hopes, given that De Vries was starting at the back and Latifi was starting in sixth place. No pressure.

Ilott made a good start, keeping his lead, and Zhou also maintained his second place. Matsushita jumped from fifth to third, as Mazepin went off track and lost everything, ending up at the back with De Vries, where they had some kind of terrifying high speed moment with each other before Mazepin pitted for a new front wing. Latifi and Sette Câmara were battling it out with each other (as usual) for fourth place, with Sette Câmara ahead for now. 

It was all still going on in lap two, with Zhou missing turn one and having to go down the escape road before slotting back into fifth place ahead of Ghiotto, and Delétraz spinning off and ending his race. He stormed off all angry. Rightly so. De Vries was taking advantage of all the drama and had already made it up to 12th, while Latifi was still fourth.

Continuing the theme of the season, the DAMS and UNI Virtuosi drivers were engaged in some intense team mate wars, with Latifi passing Sette Câmara and Sette Câmara passing him back, while Ghiotto attacked Zhou. Matsushita was also now having a go at Ilott. The top six, two by two trying to overtake each other.

Matsushita soon managed to overtake the less experienced Ilott, while Latifi couldn’t get past Sette Câmara. Ghiotto did get past Zhou, although Zhou didn’t make it easy, but then King came form nowhere (just behind in 7th) and also overtook Zhou. Calderón spun from second-to-last place and was out. 

By lap seven it was time for those on the regular strategy to pit and I was exhausted from keeping up with it all. 

Pitstop winners and f***ing losers

The pitstops offered some overtaking opportunities, with Zhou passing Sette Câmara and Ghiotto passing Latifi. UNI Virtuosi 2, DAMS 0.

Latifi did, however, manage to jump Sette Câmara in the pits, meaning Sette Câmara ended up losing two places in the pit stops. Ghiotto stayed out for the alternative strategy.

Latifi, now behind Zhou in net fourth, was told he needed to get past, so he dutifully tried, but Zhou didn’t give him enough room, cutting across Latifi just enough to slice Latifi’s front wing, get himself a puncture and end his race. Latifi wasn’t left unscathed either and had to head to the pits for a new front wing, all the while angrily ranting on the radio. Zhou was later given a three-place grid penalty for the Sprint Race for this lack of judgement.

Things were also going badly for Schumacher, who was losing power and quickly dropping back through the field. He eventually headed to the pits to retire.

De Vries, was now up to ninth (aka net 4th if ignoring those who hadn’t pitted yet) and fighting Sette Câmara hard (but then when is a fight against Sette Câmara anything less than aggressive?). The battle mostly seemed to involve De Vries flying over crazy kerbs and bits of car and kerb flying everywhere, rather than any overtaking actually happening, but then Sette Câmara locked up and cut a corner, thus gaining an advantage over De Vries and being given a five-second time penalty.

With ten laps to go, Ghiotto and the other alt-strategy-ers were pitting. Ghiotto’s pit stop was, however, very slow. I probably would have been apathetic about it but Davide Valsecchi was co-commentating and he sounded like his world was ending, so it turned into a very emotional event. Ghiotto came back out in seventh (having been fifth before the pitstops), “What the fuck happened!? asked Ghiotto. His terrified team suggested they “look at it later” while the pit crew look frightened for their lives.

Also frightened for his life was Callum Ilott, who was right behind Matsushita when a massive bit of his car just flew off, “someone forgot to put the fucking bodywork on properly” a clearly unimpressed Ilott commented.

Ghiotto, fuelled by rage and brand new tyres was flying through the field. Achieving fastest lap after fastest lap. Davide Valsecchi helpfully let us know that this is because “Ghiotto is Italian and Italians perform!” Excellent. Things were also looking up for Schumacher, who had un-retired, albeit six laps down.

De Vries was on the move now, getting the hurry up from his team who were wary of Ghiotto on one of his charges. Poor Ilott was a sitting duck, as he struggled with his tyres, and had both De Vries and Ghiotto breeze past him in the closing laps. Even De Vries’s defence only lasted so long, as Ghiotto flew past him as well to take second place. Matsushita was, however, safe and went on to win his second Feature Race. I bet Ghiotto’s pit crew were feeling less than safe, having seemingly cost Ghiotto the win… His team tried to feed him with a stream of praise over the radio, but he did not sound happy. 

De Vries was extremely happy, having gone from last on the grid to third, “Today, we drove like champions!” he declared. Latifi must have been less happy, finishing out of the points in 13th and watching his last championship hopes fade away. 

During the press conference, Ghiotto was clearly replaying the whole pitstop nightmare in his head, as he talked about how all the tiny mistakes built up to cause a big problem. I’m pretty sure that’s the exact opposite of how the whole concept of marginal gains is usually applied.

Sprint Race: Damp

Despite heavy rain in the morning, and a rather slippery looking track, everyone was out on slick tyres. It was a bit pot luck on how dry your grid slot was.

Aitken was on pole position, with Alesi and King behind him in second and third. The pole position mustn’t have been too wet as Aitken made a great start and easily kept his lead. King jumped ahead of Alesi to take second. Ilott overtook Sette Câmara for fourth. De Vries (6th) and Ghiotto (7th) were wheel to wheel, with Ghiotto managing to squeeze through, and Matsushita (8th) just went off the circuit entirely. At some point Ghiotto also managed to ram into the back of Sette Câmara, damaging both their cars a bit, which helped De Vries regain his position from Ghiotto. An eventful first lap.

A few laps in, King’s team told him he needed to hurry up and overtake Aitken, so he did, although it took many corners of them battling it out and a bit of flying off the road over the massive kerbs, before he could do so.

At the same time, much other excitement was also happening. Ghiotto’s already damaged wing had now fallen off, and he hit De Vries, who in turn hit Sette Câmara, who got a puncture and was out. De Vries was ok, while Giotto headed to the pits. De Vries even went and passed Matsushita to show how unfazed he was by the whole series of events. Ghiotto referred to De Vries as “what a ‘bleep'”, despite the stewards deciding otherwise and handing Ghiotto a five-second time penalty, Sette Câmara screamed in pure rage and the virtual safety car was deployed.

Up front, Aitken made excellent use of the VSC restart by getting a good run on King and overtaking him to regain the lead.  King doesn’t ever give up though, and, after a few laps of battling it out, Aitken ended up having to bail out and cut across a corner, but King must have felt that he had squeezed Aitken off track because he then held back to allow Aitken to regain the position. Ilott took full advantage of this weird politeness by overtaking King for second place. 

Aitken was clearly feeling the pressure from Ilott, King and De Vries behind him and defended hard by continually trying to break the tow down the straights. This enraged King who got on the radio to complain about how dangerous it was. Meanwhile, De Vries didn’t need any extra help to make the straight dangerous as he locked up and ended up going straight on, except he missed the escape road that was designed for this exact scenario and instead barrelled along the grass by the side of the road. He dropped back to fifth behind Matsushita as a result.

After several laps of weaving shenanigans Aitken was “shown” the black and white flag (his team just told him over the radio), “sorry”, he replied. On the last lap Ilott was really pushing, he was so close behind Aitken, but he locked up on the straight, à la De Vries, and narrowly missed taking Aitken out with him as he went flying down the side of the escape road (what is the actual point of the escape road?), almost running over a marshal in the process. As if that wasn’t disastrous enough, he attempted to get back onto the escape road instead of just committing to driving all the way down the grass, and ended up spinning, getting a puncture and being left to drive round to the pits with bits of tyre flying off the car. A high risk/high reward move for sure. 

Aitken managed to hold on for the win, with King in second. Matsushita came in third on the road, but he got a five-second time penalty for a VSC infringement, which meant that De Vries was promoted to the last podium position.

King was still raging about Aitken’s weaving after the race, which made for a slightly uncomfortable podium celebration, to put it lightly. Aitken also said that, in the Feature Race, he had a slow puncture during his prime tyre stint, which he described as “not ideal setup”. This sounds like a massive understatement to me, but I suppose as a Renault junior you have different benchmarks for what seems like a terrible car to drive.

Championship in the bag?

With only two rounds to go, De Vries could seal the championship in the next race. He has 255 points to Latifi’s 166. Ghiotto in third has 155 points, with Aitken on 153 and Sette Câmara on 151.