Richard Verschoor racked up 15 seconds worth of time penalties in a difficult Sprint Race for Trident at the Hungaroring, round 10 of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 championship.
“Today, we had a very linear race,” said Team Manager Giacomo Ricci, adding “We had a long train of cars that only started to battle when some drivers experienced tyre degradation problems.”
Ricci also stated that poor qualifying had affected the team’s race: “The results our drivers got in qualifying affected the outcome of their race, especially on a track like Hungaroring where it is never easy to recover.”
Dutchman Verschoor’s race unravelled following penalties accrued for exceeding track limits too often, first picking up five seconds worth of added time, before a sixth offence saw the 21-year-old slapped with a further 10 seconds, bringing the total to 15 seconds.
Starting from 14th, Verschoor made up places at turn 1, as Felipe Drugovich, Logan Sargeant and Dennis Hauger were involved in a collision, which forced Théo Pourchaire to take avoiding action, but repeatedly crossed the track-defining white line to accumulate his penalties whilst battling Campos’ Olli Caldwell.
Verschoor came to the pit lane to serve his penalty and switch to the softer compound of rubber, but a team error saw the penalty only incorrectly served, the mechanics not waiting the required 15 seconds before serving the car.
The stewards therefore added the unserved 10 second penalty to Verschoor’s race time, along with a drive-through penalty, which was converted to a 20-second time penalty, as it could not be served during the race, meaning the Dutchman was classified 18th.
However, on the fresh tyres, Verschoor did set the fastest lap of the race on Lap 26.
Australian Calan Williams had a much less eventful race, on his way to 11th, seven places higher than he started the race.
Hungary continues a miserable run for Trident and the Italian team will hope for better in Sunday’s Feature Race, which starts at 11:35 CEST.
Image: Gabor Szuhan
