Despite finishing on the podium of the opening race of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 Championship, Jehan Daruvala and Liam Lawson both felt there was room for improvement as they looked ahead to tomorrow’s Feature Race while speaking to F2 media.
Daruvala had a strong start to get into P3 and eventually got onto the second step of the podium after a hard-fought tussle with Ralph Boschung. The PREMA driver had strong pace throughout the race and was frustrated not to emerge victorious.
“I have mixed feelings,” he said. “I definitely feel we had the pace to fight for the win. I mistimed the Virtual Safety Car restart so I had to brake on the straight, and then I had a big fight with Ralph.”
The Indian driver summarised his feelings about his performance: “A good start, a lot of positives to take. I’ll learn from today and hopefully make corrections for tomorrow.”
Lawson, who finished just behind Daruvala, also had an eventful race. Starting in fifth place, he managed a clean start, held off Felipe Drugovich for the middle part of the race, before finding his way past Boschung as the Swiss driver’s tyres began to suffer.
“I thought it was a decent start but Ralph went past all of us. I had Felipe behind me who was quite fast the whole race; I was constantly defending. I had a big lock-up into Turn 1 which definitely didn’t help for the rest of the race because I had massive vibrations.”
In what he described as a “very eventful race,” the Kiwi driver was “happy to take the points,” explaining: “I wasn’t sure how the tyres were going to hang on. The others’ dropped off towards the end more than mine did and from that point, I had a little bit more [performance].”
Tyres will be particularly crucial in tomorrow’s Feature Race, with high degradation expected due to higher temperatures. Both drivers will hope to build on their results today and score highly in the all-important Sunday race.
Image Credit: Formula Motorsport Ltd
