PREMA’s Bahrain Weekend
Prema got back to their winning ways in the Sprint Race in Bahrain with Robert Shwartzman taking the win.
The win was Shwartzman’s fourth win of the season, more than anyone else in the field. The Russian started from pole and looked comfortable from the beginning, handing Prema their sixth win and a boost in the teams’ championship. Despite a safety car getting rid of his lead, Shwartzman had a blistering pace and kept increased his margin all the way to the end.
Shwartzman said: “I’m very happy with today’s result because we improved the car from yesterday and I added some improvements in terms of my driving as well. I want to thank the team because we didn’t really start on the right foot this weekend and we eventually did a good job in the end. Finally, we managed to do everything right. It was basically no mistakes apart from few lockups in turn 10, but it’s really… “loosey-goosey” in that corner, and you can get away with that. The start was good, not incredible but good enough to keep P1. I defended well and managed to open up a good gap pushing quite hard. At the end of the safety-car situation, I managed to do a good restart, and I kept first place without having to defend in turn 1. In the end, I saw I had Mazepin behind on a similar pace to mine, and I just did my job, keeping it as clean as possible and delivering at the end.”
Teammate Mick Schumacher had a good start and kept his nose clean at the beginning of the race. However, the German struggled in the final part of the race after suffering from tyre damage due to a lock-up. He had to settle for P7 which further stretches his championship position as his main title contenders were involved in incidents throughout the race.
Schumacher said: “Quite a turbulent race today. The start wasn‘t actually impressive, and even afterwards, I could never really attack but had to constantly manage my tyres. Obviously, it was even worse after the big lockup that I had, so all I could do is drive home as safe as I could. The positive aspect to take away is that I am still in the lead, so I am very much looking forward to the last race weekend of the season.”
Prema is now heading into the final round of the 2020 season but will stay in Bahrain next weekend for the new layout of the outer circuit.
Let us know your thoughts @F2inside on Twitter and join our ever growing community of Formula 2 fans!
Picture Credit: (C) Formula Motorsport Limited
