| It was another lovely day today at the Monaco Circuit at the third round of the 2017 FIA F2 Championship with air and track temperatures of 25° and 50° degrees respectively for the thirty lap Sprint Race making it much hotter than it had been for yesterday’s Feature Race. Gustav Malja was starting 3rd on the reversed grid after his excellent 6th in yesterday’s race, while Louis Delétraz was back in 15th after his race was ruined when he was hit by another competitor. Both the Racing Engineering cars were starting on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft compound tyres as were all the other cars.
Gustav made a clean start and held onto 3rd place into the chicane and at the end of the opening lap he was 1.3 seconds behind Cecotto and 1.0 second ahead of Ghiotto. Over the next seven laps the young Swede fell away a little from Cecotto as he didn’t want to overuse his tyres but he was able to keep the gap to Ghiotto constant and on lap ten the gap to Cecotto was 3.0 seconds with Ghiotto 0.9 seconds behind. After another five laps, at the half-way point, the positions had not changed with Cecotto still 3.0 seconds ahead of the Racing Engineering driver and Ghiotto 0.9 behind in 4th.
At eighteen laps Gustav had closed on Cecotto who appeared to be struggling with his tyres and he was just 0.8 seconds behind the Venezuelan but Ghiotto had also closed the gap to 0.5 seconds so Gustav could not make any mistakes and as the race entered its final ten laps the battle for second, third and fourth had become intense with the gap between the three cars just over one second and Markelov then quickly joined the back of the queue in 5th. With five laps remaining Gustav was having to fight very hard to keep Ghiotto behind but it seemed that, if nobody made a mistake, overtaking was almost impossible. The final laps saw the drivers hold onto their positions and Gustav crossed the finishing line in a very happy 3rd position.
Louis held his position at the start but he was forced to run wide into the chicane to avoid contact with other cars and he dropped to 17th which became 18th on lap two as he was passed by Leclerc. There was then a large group of cars between 11th and 19th all lapping in similar times and at the end of lap 11 the Racing Engineering driver was in 17th, following Nato’s retirement, but he was passed into the hairpin by Visoiu dropping to 18th. Over the next ten laps there were no changes at the rear of the field as all the drivers were very evenly matched although the retirements to Leclerc and Canamasas promoted Louis to 16th at the flag. An excellent result for Gustav who drove superbly, never making a mistake despite the great pressure from the drivers behind and his confidence is growing with every race. It was a disappointing day for Louis but, with starting near the back of the grid at Monaco, it was always going to be an almost impossible task to score points. The next round of the FIA F2 Championship will be in one month’s time at Baku in Azerbaijan. |
