Jehan Daruvala was made to settle for second place in the Monaco Sprint Race after a puncture warning foiled his attempts to rein in the eventual race winner Ayumu Iwasa. 

The MP Motorsport driver was putting Iwasa under pressure for most of the race, as the pair opened up a comfortable gap to third-placed Jak Crawford.

Just as he was ready to make another bid for the lead at a late safety car restart, an issue brought an end to his hopes for the win.

He said: “After the safety car I got a bit of a scare because I got a puncture warning on my dash, so I was taking it really easy because I didn’t want to have a slow puncture and put it in the wall.

“I was braking really early everywhere and thats why he [Iwasa] opened up four or five seconds within a couple of laps. By then I just decided to bring it home and took it as slow as I could.”

After starting in P3, an issue for race leader Isack Hadjar promoted Daruvala into second place, a position which never looked like it would change hands during the remainder of the race.

He said: “It’s very difficult to overtake so my goal was just to put as much pressure as I could on Ayumu but he didn’t make any mistakes.

“I knew it would be impossible to get by; the only way to get by was to force him into a mistake. I tried as much as I could so I can keep my head up and go into tomorrow.”

We rarely see many overtakes on the tight Monte Carlo circuit, and the Sprint Race was no different. Daruvala was just one of several drivers frustrated by the lack of overtaking opportunities.

The Indian driver repeated his result from last year, when he also finished second in the Monaco Sprint Race. He gained his third podium finish of the season, but has not won a race since Monza in 2022.  

Changing that record will be a challenge from P8 on the grid in the Monaco Feature Race, where mistakes from other drivers are strategy decisions are likely to be his best chances of moving up the order.

Image: Formula Motorsport Limited