FIA F2 in Spielberg

The 7th round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship took place at the RedBull Ring, surrounded by mountains and lots of forest in beautiful Styria in Austria.

Qualifying was a good improvement from the last few rounds for Roy Nissany and Brad Benavides. The track limits around the circuit are very strict and hard to judge. They have to push right to the limit of the white line, but not 1 millimeter further. Even for established F1 drivers that's a hard task around this track, especially at the high speed corners in the final sector. Roy and Brad did very well. Roy finished only 0.6 seconds of the pole position in 14th place, less than 2 tenths of a second away from the top 10. Brad improved a lot from practice as well, finishing in 18 place just over one second from pole position.

The sprint race was very good for the team. At the start of the race the circuit was still wet and it wasn’t clear if slicks or the wet tires were better. The team decided on the right tire and our drivers made up a lot of positions already at the start of the race. Both drivers showed their skills and did great overtakes in the race. Roy finished in 10th position only 1 second behind the points positions. Brad was only a few more seconds behind him in 12th place.

The feature race over 40 laps around the Red Bull Ring was quite demanding on the tires. Both drivers struggled with tire wear in the closing stages of the race after early pit stops. In the end Roy finished in 16th place and Brad in 19th place.

The FIA F2 Championship will be back on track again this weekend in Silverstone for the 8th round. We learned a lot during this weekend and will try to keep the positives from the qualifying and sprint race up for the next rounds.