Frederik Vesti struggled to make any progress in the Hungary Formula 2 Sprint Race, falling back to P9 with the champion failing to score points from his P8 starting position in Budapest.
Starting eighth was always going to be a challenging position for the Championship leader and on Lap 1 Victor Martins got the jump off the grid and pushed Vesti down to P9.
The Dane then found himself defending from attacks from both Enzo Fittipaldi and Feature Race pole-sitter Jack Doohan through turn 1 and the long left-hander of turn 2. He held both off successfully and the PREMA driver’s attention moved forwrad.
On the second lap, he tried a move around the outside of Isack Hadjar into turn 1. Hadjar with a robust defence, got his elbows out and forced him off and onto the run-off area causing the Dane to lose momentum on the run down into turn 2.
Jack Doohan sniffed the opportunity and pulled off a sensational move around the outside of Vesti at turn 2, who provided a hard but fair defence to Doohan who moved up into P9.
An astonishing DRS train that started from the Campos of Kush Maini in P3 down to the Trident of Roman Stanek in P15 plagued the majority of the race, this made it near impossible for cars to try and battle each other due to them all getting the effect of DRS and slipstream nulling the conventional gain we see. On Lap 20, Vesti was as close as ever to the back of Doohan’s Virtuosi after being stuck for numerous laps, he made an audacious lunge down the inside of Doohan into turn 1.
Vesti claimed back the place and moved back up into P9.
The final lap produced action ahead between Maini, Daruvala, Martins and Hadjar as they all scrapped it out for the final points-paying positions.
Vesti was waiting in the wings after taking the life out of his medium tyres towards the end of the race. The Mercedes Junior, however, could not capitalise on any spills from the fighting cars ahead and finished one place away from a point in P9.
He spoke after the race about how he and his team have learned from today’s running and that he’s optimistic that he can take those learnings into the feature race tomorrow, where he starts from P3:
“We got no points in the Sprint Race, which is frustrating, but I still think we had a great car and made a good overtake at the end.”
“We didn’t have the best first few laps and lost a few positions, which prevented us from scoring points, but I think we learned something today.”
“Hopefully, we can use that learning to do a good job tomorrow.”
Image: PREMA Racing
