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Tag: Sakhir
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Flash: Jehan Daruvala begins the F2 season with a podium
Sakhir, 27 March 2021: Red Bull Junior and ace Indian racer Jehan Daruvala began the season with a podium winning the second place in the inaugural Sprint Race at the Bahrain International Circuit at Sakhir here on Saturday.
The fifth FIA F2 season will comprise a total of eight rounds, all support events of the Formula 1 World Championship.
The 22-year-old, Jehan Daruvala started on P5 and did some consistent laps before making a move to take P3 on Lap 11. Daruvala puts pressure on Beckmann, going all the way around the outside of the Charouz driver in Turn 4 and claimed P3. Later, at the halfway mark rookie Lawson was on P1 followed by another rookie Pourchaire, who started on pole. Beckman was behind Daruvala.
By Lap 16, Daruvala was pushing Lawson and by Lap 18 the Indian closed the gap to 0.7 seconds and the rookie was fighting to mainain his P1 and the Carling driver had to be content with a P2. Even on the Lap 20, both the Red Bull drivers posted 1:59.9s battling for P1 but Liam Lawson held on to take a creditable win on his debut. The Indian who is doing another season of F2, neverthless began the season on a bright note unlike last year, where despite good qualifying results he had to battle his own car and had a terrible season. Only after the change of engine, did he find the fortunes, and he closed the season with his first F2 victory.
Following a change to the Sporting Regulations, the new season will see three races per round – the previous total was two – forming a 24-race season. There will be no changes to the Friday sessions, with one Free Practice session of 45 minutes and one Qualifying session of 30 minutes.
Two sprint races will take place on Saturday and will both consist of 120 kilometres or 45 minutes, whichever comes first.
The Feature Race will now take place on Sunday morning ahead of the Formula 1 Grand Prix. It will be still be one hour long or 170 kilometres (whichever comes first) and will keep a compulsory pit stop, in which all four tyres must be changed. Unless the driver has used wet-weather tyres during the Feature Race, they must use at least one set of each specification of dry-weather tyres during the Feature Race.
The Feature race will be on Sunday.
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Jehan Daruvala begins with F2 pre-season test in third
Sakhir, 8 March 2021: Charouz Racing System rookie David Beckmann was a surprise name at the top of the standings on the opening day of the Formula 2 pre-season tests in Sakhir, beating out the more experience Christian Lundgaard in the afternoon session to top the table with a time of 1:42.844.
The two-time 2020 Formula 3 race winner looked right at home in the more powerful F2 machinery, also going faster than the morning’s top driver, Dan Ticktum.
MORNING
The grid were quick to set off onto the track for their first miles of 2021, but for the majority, it was only an installation lap as they headed back into the garage for further work on their cars. 10 did brave the windy and dusty conditions of the Bahrain International Circuit, led out by Ticktum.
There was an early red flag as Richard Verschoor came to a halt down the back straight in the leadup to Turn 14. The Dutchman’s stricken MP Motorsport machine was hauled back into the garage for a check-up, while his teammate, Lirim Zendeli, got to work setting the fastest time.
The 2020 F3 race winner got off to a sterling start, flashing round in 1:44.451 to top the opening laps of the season. The German’s time in P1 was short-lived, but he did manage to cap off a solid morning with a place in the top five, finishing fourth.
Zendeli’s 2020 rival, Liam Lawson, was another of the rookies to impress in the early stages, setting the first sub 1m 44s time of the day, which would end up being good enough for P2.
Experience did eventually come to the fore as Ticktum switched on the style towards the back end of the morning, beating Lawson’s time by sixth tenths to finish top, lapping at 1:43.021.
Ticktum’s Carlin teammate Jehan Daruvala picked up where he left off last season, running towards the front of the field, though his time wasn’t quite good enough for first, as he settled for P3, seven tenths off the pace.
Three more rookies caught the eye in the morning, as Oscar Piastri, Bent Viscaal and Beckmann all earned themselves places in the top 10, finishing seventh, eighth and 10th. The familiar names of Guilherme Samaia and Marcus Armstrong also appeared towards the front, taking sixth and ninth.
AFTERNOON
MP were straight back on it when action resumed in the afternoon, Zendeli taking back his place at the top of the timesheets with a time of 1:45.010. Backed up by his teammate for the tests, Verschoor, the duo got their fast laps out of the way early doors before focusing on longer runs and dropping out of the top ten.
Reigning F3 champion Piastri made his first appearance at the top of the charts towards the halfway point of the afternoon. Like Zendeli, his attention then switched to race simulations and this saw him drop to P6.
Last season’s surprise package Felipe Drugovich had swapped MP Motorsport for 2020 title challengers UNI-Virtuosi and looked to be quickly getting used to his new machinery, briefly setting the quickest time, before falling to fourth.
Fresh from a two-round stint with HWA RACELAB at the end of last season, Théo Pourchaire was back with his F3 team, ART Grand Prix, and managed third in the afternoon. The Frenchman was beaten by his teammate Lundgaard, who showed his experience and went 0.063s quicker.
None of them could match Beckmann’s Charouz, with the German rookie roaring to first in the closing stages of the afternoon as the only driver to break the 1m 43s barrier on Day 1.
Hitech duo Jüri Vips and Liam Lawson both managed to break into the top ten in the afternoon, going fifth and eighth. Marino Sato snuck into seventh with Trident, while Viscaal and Guanyu Zhou completed the top ten, in ninth and tenth.
We’ll be back for Day 2 on Tuesday at 11.30 am IST (9am -local time).
2020 FIA FORMULA 2 CHAMPIONSHIP – PRE-SEASON TESTS, DAY 1, MORNING SESSION
DRIVER TEAM LAPTIME LAPS 1 Dan Ticktum Carlin 1:43.021 14 2 Liam Lawson Hitech Grand Prix 1:43.621 17 3 Jehan Daruvala Carlin 1:43.761 15 4 Lirim Zendeli MP Motorsport 1:44.095 35 5 Jüri Vips Hitech Grand Prix 1:44.143 16 6 Guilherme Samaia Charouz Racing System 1:44.332 31 7 Oscar Piastri PREMA Racing 1:44.346 8 8 Bent Viscaal Trident 1:44.408 19 9 Marcus Armstrong DAMS 1:44.480 13 10 David Beckmann Charouz Racing System 1:44.529 31 11 Marino Sato Trident 1:44.620 15 12 Felipe Drugovich UNI-Virtuosi 1:44.706 25 13 Richard Verschoor MP Motorsport 1:44.859 38 14 Christian Lundgaard ART Grand Prix 1:44.880 21 15 Théo Pourchaire ART Grand Prix 1:45.038 19 16 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi 1:45.060 18 17 Roy Nissany DAMS 1:45.471 18 18 Matteo Nannini HWA RACELAB 1:45.486 26 19 Ralph Boschung Campos Racing 1:45.496 24 20 Gianluca Petecof Campos Racing 1:46.362 27 21 Alessio Deledda HWA RACELAB 1:48.816 28 22 Robert Shwartzman PREMA Racing 1:58.546 7 2020 FIA FORMULA 2 CHAMPIONSHIP – PRE-SEASON TESTS, DAY 1, AFTERNOON SESSION
DRIVER TEAM LAPTIME LAPS 1 David Beckmann Charouz Racing System 1:42.844 19 2 Christian Lundgaard ART Grand Prix 1:43.534 32 3 Théo Pourchaire ART Grand Prix 1:43.570 36 4 Felipe Drugovich UNI-Virtuosi 1:43.871 28 5 Jüri Vips Hitech 1:44.079 18 6 Oscar Piastri PREMA Racing . 21 7 Marino Sato Trident 1:44.279 38 8 Liam Lawson Hitech 1:44.280 24 9 Bent Viscaal Trident 1:44.314 40 10 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi 1:44.322 28 11 Marcus Armstrong DAMS 1:44.331 34 12 Roy Nissany DAMS 1:44.581 23 13 Robert Swhartzman PREMA Racing 1:44.678 18 14 Lirim Zendeli MP Motorsport 1:45.010 36 15 Richard Verschoor MP Motorsport 1:45.134 39 16 Guilherme Samaia Charouz Racing System 1:45.189 16 17 Matteo Nannini HWA RACELAB 1:45.316 27 18 Ralph Boschung Campos Racing 1:45.561 17 19 Gianluca Petecof Campos Racing 1:46.238 33 20 Dan Ticktum Carlin 1:48.885 24 21 Alessio Deledda HWA RACELAB 1:48.990 19 22 Jehan Daruvala Carlin 1:49.637 26 -
Historic Maiden F2 win for Jehan Daruvala
By David Bodapati
Bahrain, 6 Dec 2020: In an immensely proud moment for Indian sport, India’s F1 hope – Jehan Daruvala won the Formula 2 race at the Sakhir Grand Prix. A thrilling battle against F2 Champion, Mick Schumacher and Daniel Tictum saw the 22-year-old star emerge on top in the support race of the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Jehan had a good launch from 2nd on the grid and was up alongside pole sitter – Daniel Ticktum. Tictum squeezed Jehan on the inside which allowed Championship Leader Mick Schumacher to go around the outside of both of them. Eventually, Ticktum emerged in the lead, followed by Schumacher and Jehan in third. A few corners later Jehan made a good move to pass Schumacher and get into second.
A few laps later Schumacher passed Jehan, to relegate him to third. Jehan however did not give up. A thrilling battled ensued and eventually, Jehan got past Schumacher once again, to get back into second. Jehan then reeled off a series of quick laps to catch the race leader. However, Jehan was unable to overtake. The battle for the lead intensified as Ticktum seemed desperate to win the last race of the season. Jehan, however, kept his cool and kept up the pressure. His excellent racecraft forced the race leader to start making mistakes, but Jehan found it tough to get past.
Eventually with less than ten laps to go, Jehan made another fantastic move to get past Ticktum and grab the race lead. Thereafter Jehan drove well to slowly start opening up a gap to the cars behind. Jehan finally took the chequered flag to win his maiden FIA Formula 2 race. His Japanese teammate Yuki Tsunoda was second, over 3.5 seconds behind Jehan, while Ticktum was third.
Jehan Daruvala on his way to maiden F2 win on Sunday. Photo by James Gasperotti “Motorsport is pretty big in India. We obviously have a lot of people, so I have a big fanbase back home, and my goal at the end of the day is to do myself proud but also do my country proud and to prove to people from back home that even though we don’t have the same facilities and stuff that guys have in Europe, as long as you can work hard you can fight right at the sharp end of the grid.”, said an elated Jehan.
The Indian National Anthem being heard across the Bahrain International Circuit was the best possible way for Jehan to end his season first Formula 2 season. Mick Schumacher won the F2 championship.
