Sérgio Sette Câmara felt “more stressed” than normal

With the Drivers’ title already wrapped up by Nyck de Vries in Sochi, you’d have been forgiven for thinking the final round would be a calmer one – but you’d be wrong. For Sérgio Sette Câmara, the pressure had been cranked up, and he needed to deliver more than ever.

Despite missing out on the crown himself, the Brazilian could still claim the Teams’ title for DAMS, and secure himself a Super Licence. Lining up on Pole, after dominating both sessions so far, he had the opportunity to do just that.

“This is the race of the season that I've carried the most pressure going into,” Sette Câmara admitted. “I've been told by many different people ‘you have to have the Super Licence, even if you're not going to F1 you need to have it.’

“It's always good and at some point you have to reach the targets that people set for you. It's expectation. It's like that for everything in life but it reached that point laughs and it means that Abu Dhabi was a race where I had a bit more stress than an average F2 race.” Having never won a Feature Race before, history wasn’t stacked in his favour. A poor getaway off the line made things look all the more difficult. And when he dropped to fifth, you feared the worst.

But the 20-year-old didn’t give up and his recovery drive was gritty, dogged, and plucky. By the time he passed Louis Deletraz for the lead in the closing laps, he had more than earned it.

“When you lose the lead it's like you never took pole,” he explained. “Especially off the line like I did. It was difficult. In Abu Dhabi I think all the teams get the feeling it's going to be a rear degradation race, but I think maybe with the change to this car the race has migrated to a front-deg race - at least in all the experiences I've had.

“It was extremely difficult because at some point you had the rear grip but you couldn't use it because the car just doesn't turn. It was a race where you had to recover your tyres and it was difficult to know exactly where the pace was at, but in the end we worked well as a team.

“DAMS and my engineer were letting me know the pace, I was taking clever decisions, it was a good pit stop and apparently a good car as well. In the end it worked.”

Sette Câmara has now moved up to third in Championship, just six points behind teammate Nicholas Latifi. He has also guaranteed atleast fourth, and with that, the points needed for a Super Licence.

With the Canadian starting second in the reverse grid, and Sette Camara eighth, it would require another gargantuan effort if he was to overhaul Latifi in the standings. There is also the matter of Luca Ghiotto starting from third, who sits just two points behind Sette Câmara in the table.

It’s for that reason, that he isn’t putting the pressure on himself in quite the same way as he was ahead of Saturday.

“It's never really that easy because when you're starting eighth it's always a bit messy,” he said. “There are always cars all over the place in the first few corners. You can't be too risky. It always ends up bad if you try to do 50/50 moves.

“I'll have to work hard if I want to keep Luca behind me, and it will be challenging if I am hopeful of passing Nicholas. Like I said before, I'll just try and do the best race possible. There's also the fastest lap thing, so there's different things going on. Let's see.”