Trident picked up their first FIA Formula 2 Feature Race win in over nine years in Zandvoort with Clément Novalak.
The result came as a bit of a shock after Novalak found himself in the lead during a Safety Car to recover the ART of championship leader, Théo Pourchaire who crashed on Lap 10 of the race with cold tyres.
However, it was more than ‘right place right time’ for Novalak. He managed the Safety Car restart perfectly and kept his lead until the end of the race, holding off Zane Maloney behind him.
Prior to this, his season hadn’t been so lucky. Going into Round 12 of the season, Novalak only had two points to his name after a tricky year.
Speaking exclusively with insideF2 writer, Michael McClure, Trident Team Boss, Giacomo Ricci spoke on the impact the victory has had on the team:
“Let’s keep up the momentum in FIA F2 with this great result in order to keep the motivation high in the team, Clem, and his team mate, Roman Stanek.”
He also spoke on the impact it will have on Novalak and his confidence going forward into the final two rounds of the championship:
“Clem is a great guy. We had him also in Formula 3 where he finished third in the championship with us. We also had some extremely good pace in some other races of the season so he deserved his win.”
As I mentioned at the top of the article, this was their first Feature Race win in nine years. However, the team have come close a few times but haven’t had luck on their side.
“It’s a great result for the team. Of course, we’ve been close to achieve this result also this last year with in the Red Bull Ring. We suffered a disqualification of the race but, again, we show good pace today.
“We were a little bit lucky, of course, with the new regulations regarding the Safety Car.
“We should be happy also because when Clem was leading , we were able to keep up with a great pace.”
Ricci remained realistic despite their amazing result but races like these are the reason why we all love F2:
“This is the nice thing about F2, that with the strategy you can sometimes play a little gamble and you can achieve this kind of result.”
Image: Formula Motorsport Limited
