After taking his first win of the 2021 FIA Formula 2 Championship last time out, Jehan Daruvala is aiming to repeat his Monza success in Sochi this weekend. The Indian driver sits seventh in the points standings, but will hope to continue his upwards trajectory to gain ground in the championship.
“After the strong weekend in Monza I am very much looking forward to Sochi,” said Daruvala, full of confidence ahead of the sixth round of the F2 season. He enjoys the Russian circuit where he had a strong showing in 2020, and is targeting an even better performance this time round.
“Last year we went really well round here, I qualified on the front row and I think our package is super strong here. Hopefully this time we can win the feature race on Sunday.”
Consistency is key in Formula 2, and the Red Bull Junior driver is focused on building a streak of good results: “It seems this year that I’ve been kind of having one good, then one bad weekend so we’ve got to break that cycle.”
Crucial to breaking that cycle will be his Qualifying pace, which was the strongest it has been all season in Monza and set him up for a great weekend.
“The main thing this year, with this format, is the Qualifying. I’ve been qualifying eighth, nineth, our goal in the break was really to put the focus on Quali and that was the main difference at Monza, I qualified second. I had two chances to sit on the front row and go for the win.”
Even with a strong qualifying performance, the current reverse-grid format necessitates overtaking for any driver trying to maximise their points haul. The Carlin driver is looking forward to using his pace to gain positions this weekend.
“I think that with pace you can overtake. We have the super soft and the medium in Sochi so with some degradation it could make things interesting.”
With rain on the forecast this weekend, the racing could be very interesting indeed. To keep up with all of the action from Sochi this weekend follow InsideF2 across our social media and check out our website for all the latest F2 news.
