Interviews by Sergio Álvarez; photos by Diego Merino; also feat. screen grabs from @FIA_F2 (again!)
Ah… The race. Feature. Race. The. I might sound like Yoda actually. Baby.
The star of the race, to my mind, was Tsunoda, what a drive! Reminds us of Kimi in 2006. In Bahrain.
And our old interviewee, the new Felipe on the block, did amazing – arguably aided by Ilott’s two-light-years Irvine-esque pit stop, see what I did there? Ferrari, 1999, Irvine at the Nurburgring, a missing wheel. CI being an FDA driver. Conspiracy. Not, of course. Note I think you talk I much too? To be fair, Callum’s wheel got jammed with Eric Clapton, it didn’t go missing at all. Slowhand pit stop, you follow?
Let’s get down to it, we shall?
Behold! Race results. ↓
Q: Callum, when you had the slow pit stop, did you expect to finish as high as second and even ahead of Mick Schumacher, your main rival in the championship?
CI: I mean the first thing that goes through your head is like “ah, c’mon, get a tyre on, let’s go”! And I was sat there long enough to almost, y’know, get out and do it myself. But no! These things happen and I don’t get too frustrated by them because it’s part of what it is, whether it happens again when I’m in a top three position or whether I’m last, it’s just a matter of luck. We practice to make sure these things don’t happen. Of course, I make a mistake going out on track sometimes so you’ve got to expect that these things happen. The tyres are 21 kilos or something, it’s not easy to lift up with one arm either. I do feel sympathy for the guys and I don’t hold it against them. Obviously going out I thought I was gonna be a little bit more on the back foot, so when I saw Felipe exiting – they timed it quite well to make sure he was still in front at that point. But it did make it more difficult for me in the long run because I boxed three or four laps earlier than I should’ve and I lost more than 4-5 seconds in that pit stop. So yeah, it did have an effect towards the end of the race, for sure.
Q: Jehan, what does a result like this do in terms your relationship with the Red Bull Junior Team?
JD: Well, this year’s been hard, like I said. All I can do is just prove that I can fight at the sharp end of the grid. At the end of the day, I’m just gonna do my best and it’s not really up to me what happens next year. So I just gotta show that I can deliver and hopefully I’m on the programme next year and can fight for the championship.
We’d like to thank F2 drivers for their extended answers to our questions! Keep it up, fellas.
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