Time for the championship for realz
Barcelona marks the start of the proper season. No more outliers and no more excuses. That includes for me, and if Nyck de Vries doesn’t start winning soon I’m going to have to reconsider how I research my season previews.
Practice: A bad start for De Vries
The beginning of the practice session gave us plenty of Mick Schumacher action, an essential part of any F2 weekend, it’s important that we all get our fill. This was, however, ruined by Correa bringing out the red flag as he beached himself in the gravel trap. He got out of the car and took off his helmet and balaclava, clearly not having learnt that disgraced racing drivers must walk back to the pits with their helmets still on.
De Vries, meanwhile, spent most of the practice session in the pits thanks to some trouble with his car.
At the end of the session, Ghiotto was fastest as per usual, with Latifi second and Gelael third.
Qualifying: “There’s something wrong with the car”
Qualifying was just one large traffic jam. Gelael and De Vries even had a little battle, with Gelael trying to overtake De Vries, and De Vries having none of it, pushing Gelael wide off the track.
Ultimately, despite earlier complaining that there was “something wrong with the car”, Ghiotto put it on pole right at the end of the session. He beat Latifi, who felt there was also “something wrong with the car” and that he could have done better.
The final three were Ghiotto, Latifi and Zhou. De Vries came fourth, with Aitken in fifth, and only one second between the top 15 drivers.
After qualifying, both Campos drivers, (Aitken and Boccolacci) were given three-place grid penalties, as they were found to have an undeclared rear part of the wooden plank during practice. Whatever the fuck that means.
Feature Race: Valsecchi returns
The most important feature of the Feature Race was that former F2 champion Davide Valsecchi was co-commentating. If you’ve heard Davide’s commentary before then you’ll know what that means, and if you haven’t then you have never truly experienced F2 in its finest form.
Before the race starts it’s always important to hype up the tyre strategy a bit. Oh the excitement! Which would be best? Starting on the softs or the hards? Most were on the softs, but Boschung, Hubert and King had gone for the hards. Better keep a look out for them. Correa didn’t need to worry about his tyre strategy, as he stalled on the formation lap and had to start from the pitlane.
Pole-man Ghiotto made yet another terrible start, falling to seventh, while third-placed Zhou got a great start, jumping up to the lead. Schumacher and Alesi both got into accidents, not with each other, but who knows, it was all very 90s for a moment. Alesi’s race was over but Schumacher managed to escape with just a puncture and toiled round to the pits. Meanwhile, Boccolacci compounded Ghiotto’s terrible day by crashing into him. The safety car was deployed and Boccolacci was handed a drive-through penalty.
Out front, Zhou led Latifi, with De Vries in third, followed by Aitken and Ilott. Ghiotto was somehow resurrected and went to the pits for a new nose. Zhou made a good safety car restart (his first in F2) while his team bothered him about the set up of his car, as if there was anything more he could do about it at that point.
On lap seven, Zhou and Latifi both went for their pitstops, while Aitken overtook Ilott to take the lead of the race. Zhou made it out of the pits just ahead of Latifi, but it couldn’t have been closer. Ilott and De Vries both jumped in the pits the following lap. Aitken pitted a lap later, in an attempt to overcut De Vries, which worked for a few corners, before De Vries, with much warmer tyres, made the overtake.
After everyone who started on the soft tyres had made their pitstops, Boschung, on his alternative strategy was in the lead and going very fast, which must have been particularly important for him as he is apparently having sponsorship problems and not sure if he will be able to fund the whole F2 season. Sad times. Or, as harshly put by commentator Alex Jacques, “that’s motorsport”.
At this point it was all those on the alternative tyre strategy up front (Boschung, Hubert, Schumacher and Raghunathan), followed by Zhou, Latifi, De Vries and Aitken. However, Hubert wasn’t content settling for second place and DRS’d Boschung for the lead.
At the other end of the field, it was catastrophe all round. Correa’s terrible luck continued with him getting stuck in the pits with a broken car, having only dropped by for his mandatory tyre change. He did make it back out again, but only to have an accident with fellow bad-luck magnet Schumacher, who was then left driving around with a broken front wing while complaining to his team that “I think there’s something wrong with the car”.
Meanwhile, after spending ten laps hooked up to a laptop in the pits, Sette Câmara (who had started the race in seventh) finally made it back out only to be instantly hit with a stop-go penalty for earlier driving like a crazy into the pitlane and crashing into the bollard (aka speeding in the pitlane). The stewards must literally have been waiting for the second he made it back out on track. “There he is! Get him!”
“It’s too late!”
Up front, Hubert was still first and the fastest driver on track, trying to build enough of a gap between him and the guys who had already pitted to keep his lead. He was helped by the battles going on behind him, with Aitken overtaking De Vries and Latifi eventually reigning in Zhou for the potential net lead of the race. At the same time, Davide Valsecchi was going insane over how long they left Hubert out without pitting him. “Why not stop Hubert?! It’s too late!!” I’ve never been so excited about pitstops before. Thanks Davide.
With five laps to go, Hubert finally came into the pits, only managing to come back out in eighth place. That left Latifi in the lead, with Zhou behind him, but not for long as “The Jack Attack” overtook Zhou to take second place. Ghiotto behind them had managed to carve his way through the field from at one point being 18 seconds behind everyone else to now being up to fourth place, passing De Vries on route.
The final three were Latifi, with Daniel Ricciardo levels of grinning and a crying mum, Aitken, with his TV smile, and Zhou, with F2s greatest hair cut. A great day for Renault juniors, although I think we all know that Renault’s F1 problems aren’t caused by a lack of driver talent…
It was also a good day for the alternative strategists, with Hubert managing to finish sixth, having started the race in 15th, and King achieving a similar feat for seventh. Ilott won reverse grid pole for the Sprint Race as well as his first F2 points following all the crashing he did earlier in the season.
Sprint Race: Ghiotto on the hunt
The Sprint Race grid lined up with Ilott on pole, followed by King, Hubert, De Vries and Ghiotto.
Hubert and De Vries both got excellent starts, jumping to the front of the field, but De Vries played it cool and stuck to second place behind Hubert. Calmly waiting it out. Ghiotto managed to only lose two places (to Zhou and Aitken) at the start, which was an improvement for him and still better than what was happening to Matsushita whose car was massively on fire, resulting in a safety car.
At the safety car restart Hubert was able to keep the lead, despite De Vries putting him under pressure and carefully planning his attack: “When is DRS opening?” Nyck questioned. Hubert was probably hoping “never”, because De Vries DRS’d him no problem as soon as he could to take the lead of the race, and it wasn’t long before Ilott did the same thing. Behind them were King, Zhou, Aitken and Ghiotto, but Ghiotto was on another of his runs, powering through the field from seventh to fourth in just a handful of laps. He barely even needed DRS, he was just much faster than everyone else.
Midfield, Schumacher was hounding Gelael (again). Gelael moved out of the way a bit to avoid contact, as Schumacher barged his way through. Best. Team mate. Ever.
Latifi, who had been a bit anonymous for the first part of the race, finally overtook someone and clearly got a taste for it as he went on a bit of a Ghiotto-style attack on all those ahead of him. Ghiotto himself had, by this time, caught Hubert, breezed past him for third place and was quickly coming towards De Vries and Ilott. Ghiotto’s pace was an apparent concern for the top two and they all had to speed up to try to hold him off.
Sette Câmara, in 15th, was probably just wishing his weekend was over already as he went off track while battling Mazepin, before co-commentator Anthony Davidson made it worse for him by pointing out to the world that Sette Câmara failed to go round the cone to rejoin the track safely. Sette Câmara was then promptly handed a five-second time penalty. “Oh no, it was on camera and we pointed it out to everyone too…” Nice one Ant.
Ghiotto’s charge meanwhile was continuing and poor Ilott was mercilessly hunted down like a wounded gazelle trying to outrun a cheetah. With two laps to go, Ghiotto was within DRS range, but not quite close enough to pass. It was all down to the final lap where desperate last-minute action ensued at every corner:
- Ghiotto overtook Ilott for second place;
- Zhou passed Hubert for fourth;
- Schumacher tried to pass Aitken but instead just hit Aiken, drove off the track, missed *that* cone and then came back on track ahead of Aitken. He got a five-second penalty for his efforts.
The race ended with De Vries in first place, followed by Ghiotto and Ilott. Zhou, Hubert, Latifi, King and Aitken rounded up the top eight
Finally
Finally De Vries has won something, he is as relieved as I am. He has also been subjected to wearing F3 driver David Beckmann’s race overalls, as his were accidentally thrown away at the last race. Someone hastily handed him a sticker with his name to go over the front and by the time he made it to the pre-podium room they had given him two more stickers with the Dutch flag and his sponsor’s logo, lovingly home made. “Does your championship start now?” he was asked. He looked blankly, “Well obviously it started in Bahrain.”
Ilott was vey happy about that first podium, and so were his team, “Even though you went from first to third, you should be really happy, good job.” Aww, lovely. It was less lovely in the post-race press conference when Ghiotto was asked “Tell us about one of the highlights of the race, when you overtook Callum Ilott at the end.” Awkward pause as it probably wasn’t Callum’s highlight of the race. Ghiotto was very gracious in his answer and of course didn’t look too happy about it.
The standings…
At the end of the weekend Latifi is still in the lead of the championship with 93 points. Ghiotto is now second with 67 points but De Vries, who has moved up to third, and Aitken who is down to fourth, are very close behind.