Oliver Goethe, MP Motorsport driver, reflects on how this weekend has played out for him compared to the rest of the field. The German qualified 18th on the Friday afternoon session, however gained six places up to 12th with the help of a 10-second penalty for PREMA’s Gabriele Mini:
“I qualified further back than I should have been that’s for sure. The pace is stronger than where I’m starting the races. Unfortunately on top of that, the start was bad so I dropped right to the back. From then on, I made position after position, I had to fight quite a lot to catch the front group. Then when I reached that group, I struggled to get past because my tyres were a bit gone.
“The pace when I was on my own was one of the strongest so I’m happy with that. But yeah unfortunately, qualifying has been bad again, and it always limits opportunity in the race.”
Not only is Silverstone such an unpredictable circuit due to its high-speed corners but the weather also plays a huge part in the nature of the track, especially since we could be looking at a few spots of rain this weekend.
Could a change in conditions put the team at a higher advantage?
“I wouldn’t say I’m more confident because the pace in the dry is good. I know in the dry I can make up positions but then with a wet race, there is always a lot of opportunity, especially if it’s in between wet and dry.
“I’d say maybe I want kind of a messy race, there’s more opportunity but I think the pace in the dry is good as well. Whichever it is, I’m sure I can tie back into the top 10 and hopefully get some points for the team.”
MP Motorsport sits second in the overall teams’ championship behind Campos Racing with the help of team mate Richard Verschoor, who managed to extract a Feature Race win last weekend in Austria and now leads the drivers’ championship.
This doesn’t distract him as he explains how he believes the season is going for him:
“Yeah, a bit similar to this weekend. Qualifying has been poor and the race pace has been really strong. It’s really frustrating because we know if we get a qualifying right, we’ll be able to fight for podiums and wins so we just need to improve on qualifying and then we know the pace is there and good enough for the races.
“Sometimes I don’t put together the best lap when it really counts, like this weekend, I made a mistake on the lap where everyone did their best lap. Then in other races, there’s been something else or I haven’t been comfortable with the car. It all depends but it’s definitely overall what we’ve been missing this year.”
It’s important to note that Goethe is much more than a rookie this season after filling Franco Colapinto’s boots for the remainder of the 2024 season once he’d moved into the Williams F1 seat, gaining crucial experience during the final four rounds.
How has that affected his outlook for 2025 so far?
“At the end of the day, it’s my first full year in Formula 2, so I would say we’ve had a lot of official testing. In the end, I’ve probably done similar amounts of laps to the other rookies but having been to Baku and Qatar, it definitely helps me.”
The F2 weekend continues at Silverstone on Sunday the 6th of July, with the Feature Race being held at 9:00 local time.
Image: Getty Images
