Zane Maloney’s Monza weekend in his words

4 September 2023

A promising race weekend at Monza seemed to get away from Rodin Carlin’s Zane Maloney. Punctuated with a sizeable crash in the Feature Race, it was a world away from his start to the round after showing competitive pace in Free Practice.

The Bajan driver takes us through his weekend session-by-session, detailing what went right and what eventually went wrong on his visit to the Temple of Speed.

PRACTICE – P5

“It was great. Of course, coming to Monza it’s such a fast track with big braking, so it’s difficult to be on it straight away, but I was able to do that in Practice. I feel great to get back to Monza. I won here in F3 last year, Qualified second and Practice went about as well as it could’ve. It was a positive session.

“The big braking zones are tough. You don’t really get many of them on the calendar and then Monza is all about it so it’s the braking zones and being on the limit and the high-speed corners. We have low downforce in Monza so everything’s trickier for the driver. If we took this set-up to Zandvoort we’d be two seconds off. Everything is moving around over the lap so it’s difficult to handle and the slipstream is very big here. The track isn’t the toughest track in the world but with everything going on, it makes it difficult.”

QUALIYING – P20

“A disaster of a session. In Monza we know that there’s going to be a lot of messing around. We had a run plan, and everyone has a run plan for let’s say five push laps for the whole of Quali, and in the end we only got two laps. And those two push laps – the first one I went straight in Turn 1 and on my second I went in the gravel at T4. Realistically I didn’t get any laps which is annoying and frustrating, especially after Practice where we knew if we do a clean session, we’re in the top five, six or seven, and then you’re fighting for the top three as well.

“I’m going to go to dinner, try get some sleep. You’re not going to wake up happy so you just have to wake up as not angry as you can. It’s difficult because in F2 especially, you know that the kind of Qualifying you have determines your weekend unless something crazy happens, so I’ll try get a good sleep and come ready tomorrow to make up some places, that’s all you can do really.”

SPRINT RACE – P14

“I’d say it was a disaster again to be honest. Lap 1 we had some contact and I think there was some damage after that. Got hit the rear on Lap 3, but it’s always chaos around here. Drivers are making mistakes because of the low downforce and it’s easy to get into a tangle, especially when you’re at the back and everything is bunching up. Started P20, finished P14, it looks like we made up six places so I guess that’s a positive we can take but we just need to try and have good pace in the Feature Race. Maybe we’ll try something a little bit different, but we’ll see how we feel tomorrow morning, but the main thing is to have some pace and stay out of trouble tomorrow. It’s always good to make up places but when you start P20, you need to make up 15 places to make it look good. That’s the plan tomorrow.

“Monza’s very long straights so you think it’s easy to overtake but everyone’s pushing so in the end it’s not. Everyone’s within DRS so it just becomes a train so what we need to do tomorrow is get ourselves out of that and have clean air, push on when we can and if we have good pace, you can pick one off every two laps. The main thing is to have pace, it’s going to be a difficult race tomorrow, I’m sure it’ll be chaos but hopefully we can reap the benefits of that chaos and make our way through.”

FEATURE RACE – DNF

“It was a really good race actually. I was P14 after the first lap. When the crash happened, I was probably net P10, and we’d have already made up 10 places which is a good day at the office. Pace was good. I was just driving down the straight and then one second later I’m heading to the wall.

“To be honest, I didn’t really take much away from the race. We knew that we had good pace all weekend, but I Qualified bad which put us in a difficult situation. Everything became difficult after that. We had good pace but that wasn’t a surprise. Two months until the next race.”

UP NEXT – The Formula 2 finale at Yas Marina

“I’d love to have a race next weekend to be honest, but I’ll just be focusing on life in general, have some time at home, train hard and be back for Abu Dhabi. We’re nowhere near where we want to be in the Championship, but we are there on pace. Hopefully we’ll have a very good race and I’ll put myself in a good position for what’s to come next year.

“It’s a nice circuit. In terms of targets, it’s always to get on the podium and win races. We’ll see. I’m going to go home first, relax with family. The team are doing a great job, so we’ll be back in Abu Dhabi strong.”