A difficult day for Racing Engineering today at the Hungaroring

30/07/17 A difficult day for Racing Engineering today at the Hungaroring.

It was very hot again this morning at the Hungaroring for the 28-lap Sprint Race of the seventh round of the 2017 FIA Formula Two Championship with air and track temperatures of 27° and 45° respectively. Following yesterday’s Feature Race, Racing Engineering’s two drivers, Louis Delétraz and Gustav Malja, had finished in 11th and 15th positions but post-race penalties to Sette Camara and Gelael promoted them to 10th and 13th, and for Louis this meant he scored his first point in F2. The two Racing Engineering cars were starting on P Zero White medium tyres as were all the other teams.

Louis finished the opening lap in 12th right behind the car of King and for the next ten laps the two cars were tied together as the two man lapped in almost identical times but the young Swiss driver was having to watch his mirrors as Jeffri was, in turn, very close to the Racing Engineering car. As the race reached the half-way point Louis had fallen away slightly from King and the gap was now two seconds but he had pulled away from Jeffri who was now three seconds behind. Over the next six laps the gap between Louis and King remained constant at two seconds but Jeffri was falling further away and was now five seconds behind the Racing Engineering driver. There was a brief Virtual Safety Car period following an accident between Jeffri and Canamasas and Louis took advantage to pitstop and change to the on P Zero Yellow soft tyres resuming the track in 14th place and was now lapping very quickly. In the closing laps Louis passed Ferrucci and Sette Camara and he crossed the finishing line in 12th side-by-side with King.

Gustav was in trouble from the start as he fell back to 18th in the first two laps and he reported an engine problem over the team radio. On lap eight the young Swede returned to the pits and the Racing Engineering team took the engine cover off the car and began to look for the problem. After losing five laps Gustav returned to the track and he immediately began to set some fast laps but he had to settle for 18th at the flag.

The Racing Engineering team will now return to their Sanlucar de Barrameda base in Spain for a well-deserved summer break but they will continue to strive to get their cars back at the front at the next race at Spa in one month’s time.

©FIA F2 Championship

©FIA F2 Championship

Team Comments:

Sebastien Viger - Technical Director: “This was a hot and eventful race as expected. Gustav's race was plagued by an engine issue, his engine made a strange noise and it lacked power, so his race turned into a test session to make sure the problems are solved for the next races. Louis, on the other hand, lost some positions at the start of the race, which made it more complicated to finish in the points. With the VSC we took the opportunity to try something different and to have a better tyre towards the end. This worked to some extent, but it was not enough and we ran out of laps. But we lost too many places at the start and from there on the race was pretty much done. We will make good use of the break to come back to tracks, which suited us very well in the past and the target has to be to get this performance back.”

Gustav Malja: “I had quite a good initial start. I was close to stalling, which is a good sign. I had some quite good opening laps, but then i started to struggle a lot with the engine. I got passed by the entire field, which is unfortunate. The engine issue continued and was the same as we had already suffered from during race 1. I had to pit to try to solve it and went back on track again, it wasn't any better and we pitted again, but the problem continued throughout the entire race. Very unfortunate and there is little the team can do about the engine. What a pity as the engine should not be a factor, it should be about performance, but we could not do anything with this engine today and it's a real, real shame. I hope the issues can be fixed for Spa and we can have an equal battle there and for the rest of the year.”