In the round-up: Carlos Sainz Jnr explained how he had to allow his team mate ahead of him multiple times in qualifying to respect Ferrari’s regular driver agreement.
In brief
Sainz had to let Leclerc past “all the time” in qualifying
Sainz said he had to let his team mate pass him several times in qualifying yesterday as part of Ferrari’s arrangement, which he felt risked compromising his performance at times.
Ferrari rotate which driver gets the beneficial position in their running order during qualifying from race to race. As a result Sainz said he had to let Charles Leclerc past “at the exit of the pit lane all the time,” which made him concerned he might miss an opportunity to set a lap time.
At one point Sainz overtook his team mate at the end of a lap in order to ensure he was able to start a new lap.
“Obviously when you are behind in quali you feel like you are more in a rush to get a lap in and I really nearly didn’t get a lap in, that’s why I had to go,” he explained.
Bearman’s off “karma” for defence – Doohan
Jack Doohan says that Oliver Bearman’s late off in the Silverstone F2 sprint race was “karma” for his robust defending against him.
Doohan had been furious with Bearman’s defensive moves as the pair battled over fourth place (later third), the Virtuosi driver’s complaints over team radio regularly broadcast on the world feed. Bearman eventually ran off the road at Vale with two laps remaining, dropping to sixth and moving Doohan up onto the podium.
“It was probably my 13th time trying to get past him,” Doohan told media including RaceFans. “He pushed me all the way out onto the double kerb at the exit of turn 15 [Vale] and then swerved under braking into 15, locked up and goes off.
“I just did a little wave because I felt karma had come back. A little ‘au revoir my friend and see you later’.”
Barnard penalised for punting Montoya
F3 racer Taylor Barnard was handed a post-race time penalty after hitting Sebastian Montoya out of the lead of the sprint race at the Safety Car restart.
Montoya led the race from pole until the restart, when Barnard hit him from behind approaching the first corner at Abbey, sending Montoya skidding off and dropping both down the order.
Stewards deemed Barnard “wholly responsible” for the incident, but the penalty makes no difference to his final result as he remains 30th and last in the final race classification. Montoya eventually finished eighth.
Garcia extends F1 Academy lead after thrilling finishes
Marta Garcia extended her championship lead in the F1 Academy series after two exceptionally close finishes in the opening two races of the weekend in Monza and a post-race penalty for closest rival Hamda Al Qubaisi.
Garcia held off Lena Buhler in race one to win by just nine-thousandths of a second as the top five finishers were covered by less than seven tenths. Buhler then took victory in race two, just under a tenth-and-a-half ahead of Bianca Bustamante.
A post-race penalty for Hamda Al Qubaisi for causing a collision in race two dropped her from eighth to tenth, meaning Garcia’s championship advantage now sits at 29 points. Following a dramatic accident at the start of race one, Chloe Grant was withdrawn from the rest of the weekend’s racing.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Norris is no muppet – he is an F1 champion in waiting (The Telegraph)
”Lewis (Hamilton) has had it for too many years already. It’s about time he let someone else have a go! But there’s no jealousy. It’s like when you say ‘Are you jealous of Lewis Hamilton’s stats in Formula 1?’ As much as I’d like them, there’s just no point saying ‘It’s my goal’ because it’s absurd. Almost impossible. I’m just doing the best I can in the car that I’m driving. That’s all I can do.”
Leclerc: ‘I want to bring Ferrari back to where it deserves to be – on top’ (Guardian)
”I say to the team what I think and the team say what they think. This is the way to move forward. I don’t think the trust has ever been an issue. We have a very different vision inside the car than what the team has on the pit wall, so these things happen.”
Six Hours of Monza: a promising qualifying session for Team Peugeot’ (Peugeot Sport)
Jean-Eric Vergne: ”I’m very happy with my session, P4 is our best result so far. The car felt good, three tenths away from the Toyota so I think that we can be quite happy with it. ”
Former test driver Susie Wolff: ‘There’s still a stigma to being beaten by a girl’ (The Telegraph)
”F1 Academy cannot just be about 15 young women racing. And we cannot have the sole purpose of trying to find the next female F1 driver. We have to stand for something much more. It’s about creating opportunity. How are we making motorsport accessible to girls? That’s why I’m spending a lot of my time in the world of karting right now, trying to understand, OK, who’s out there racing? At what level? What is stopping girls from racing? I think that’s where we’ve got to be really proactive. Because that talent pool is what we need to grow.”
Fuel for Thought: Naomi Schiff on Her Path From the Track to the Television (Sports Illustrated)
‘It was definitely a huge transition. First of all, because all of a sudden, I found myself where I always wanted to be. F1 was always my goal and although I planned to be there as a driver, I got there in a different shape and form which is fine. That was the most mind-blowing thing to me.’
‘I trained like an F1 driver at Silverstone and realised just how fit they are’ (Mirror)
‘I was told that, for a first timer, a score of 90, equaling to 1.5 per second, is a pretty good score. I started off with an 83 and was determined to break the 90 mark in my second attempt. Unfortunately, one light just escaped my peripheral vision and a brief spell trying to locate it knocked me off rhythm and 83 ended up being my top score. F1 drivers generally score over 120, meaning they knock two lights per second or faster.’
We get dinner with Dario Franchitti (Car and Driver)
‘One would understand if Dario never wanted to talk about cars again. His crash at the Houston Grand Prix in 2013 should have been a career ender. With broken bones and a serious concussion, his doctors told him he couldn’t risk additional brain trauma by getting back in a race car, but his whole life had revolved around racing. ”I had to tell Chip (Ganassi) I quit. I had no idea if I’d ever work again. I said yes to everything that was offered.”
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Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Huzeifa!
