Round 11 Post Feature Race Press Conference

FIA Formula 2: Good morning from Monza, where it's now time for the press conference with the top three finishers in today's FIA Formula 2 Feature Race. In third place, we have Josep Maria Marti for Campos. Second is Joshua Duerksen for AIX Racing and your race winner is Luke Browning for Hitech TGR. Luke, congratulations, your first pole position in F2 becomes your first win in F2 just how good does that feel?

Luke Browning: Yeah, it's the monkey off the back I think, not like to be honest, I was majorly bothered. I think main thing is gathering the points, but equally, it's very, very nice to have a first place trophy in the cabinet here and to say that I'm a Formula 2 winner. The podium here is really special. I think it's one of the best in the year. So to walk across that stage felt really special today. What a step up from everyone around, the way we work together, worked on my driving, the car, and then the way we executed coming into today was exceptional. And for that, just a massive thanks to Hitech and the processes that we've been following seem to be working. So it's a nice place to be.

FIA Formula 2: I mentioned you started from Pole. It's never easy to lead around here. But you had some spells in second, some spells in the lead. Did you have specific game plan for today?

Browning: Honestly, no, I was just ready to fight. I knew I wanted to win it, but not at all costs. I just wanted to get the best result that I could. I was realistic coming into today, having understood the pace yesterday, and just trying to get the best result that we could. And today, the best result that we could was P1, the car was fantastic, and that's what we extracted.

FIA Formula 2: Well, you're up to second in the Championship standings with that win. I've got your at 21 points off the lead now behind Fornaroli after this weekend. Do you feel like you've got some momentum after the Feature Race results you've had? Because as you say, your Sunday results have been really strong recently. Luke Browning: Yeah, for sure. I think it's always nice to take this step after coming back from a big break to be quick. It shows the preparation, the fitness, and I've not lost focus, which is nice. I think that's just down to Hitech and the way we've been preparing. Really, they've done a great job. And I think the main thing is just focusing on myself. It's been the goal since the start just trying to stay out of trouble in this Championship. It’s so difficult to do that. It's seen me well so far in the Feature races and long may it last.

FIA Formula 2: Well, congratulations. Josh, moving on to you now, a double podium for you. You must be delighted with your Monza weekend.

Joshua Duerksen: For sure, I love Monza. In the past, in F4 I also enjoyed many podiums here. I just really love Monza, I love Italy, I love also the food here, and just the people, and the track. It's really fun racing because Monza always delivers great action. You're always have chances to overtake, and I think this is just the most fun part for us as a driver.

FIA Formula 2: Well, a good start looked to be the key to your race today but I imagine you had a lot of close calls out there too, so just talk us through it a little bit? Duerksen: Yeah, it was quite sketchy. Luckily, we got a good race start this time. Yesterday wasn't the greatest but this time we nailed it. I think I saved myself twice from big crashes. I just saw it in the mirror, big front locks ups and just a lot of smoke. So I knew something was not going right behind me, so I just open it up, let the guys go through and just arrive the corner. It was quite tough. But this is also very easy to do in Monza, because of the hard braking zones, the late breaking, and just having the car on the limit, on the braking, makes it very easy to make this kind of front lock ups and then just go straight. But luckily my peripheral vision is working well. So, I think this helped me to keep the podium.

FIA Formula 2: You had to fight for second place right to the end as well in that final lap with Pepe. Just talk us through that and balancing the risk and reward on old tires on the final lap.

Duerksen: Yeah, it was quite tough. I was trying to stay on Browning’s DRS just to go away with him, try to create a gap of more than one second and just go. Sadly, I couldn't tell him that on the radio, because it would have been nice. But as soon as I lost the DRS, of course, I was losing time. I was losing time on the straights. So the guys behind me were catching up. I was trying to manage the tires as good as possible. My engineer was telling me, I think, three laps to go, and then I was like, okay I think I can manage this. Then he told me, sorry correction, five laps to go. Then I was like, okay this will be tight. It was coming quick, but I was just focused on my job, just trying to extract everything I could from the tires just to survive until the last minute, we had a great fight. It was quite close, I’, just really happy that in Monza we have 30 laps and not 31. So I'm happy with that.

FIA Formula 2: Well done today on the podium. Pepe P3 for you, your first Feature Race podium of the season and it looked pretty eventful out there.

Josep Maria Martí: Yeah, like you said my first Feature Race podium of the season. It's obviously come much later on than I wanted, but nonetheless, you have a very action-packed race. I knew we had pace even yesterday or before yesterday, because in qualifying, when the red flag came out, we were actually very, very competitive. Unfortunately, we started further back than we wanted or deserved. So we knew it was a bit of a catch-up game. Today was just about that. Yesterday we had a pretty decent start, and I was expecting today that some drivers would have a not great start. And so it was, I think I gained like five, six positions in the first lap. It was quite an eventful one. The race almost turned on it’s head when the safety car came out and I had to double stack behind Arvid. I lost, I think, three, four positions, which was a bit of a shame. Then everything kicked off. So it was a very eventful race. The fights at the end were also quite crazy. But a good, good race, I would say.

FIA Formula 2: Talk us through some of those fights and trying to stay out of trouble, because we saw a lot of incidents, certainly at Turn 1 with all the restarts.

Martí: Yeah in the last two fights, I'd say was mostly with Villagomez I thought he was moving very aggressively, generally on the brakes. There was one time where I almost went into the back of him at T4. Which I have no problem with, because we didn't crash. But in the end, he's just taking a massive risk for no particular reason. In the last lap, I think it was a bit of a misunderstanding, because I really wasn't trying to overtake Joshua. I was already happy with third, and I was like, okay, I'll just, I'll just finish here but then he broke much earlier than I anticipated, so I had to go to the inside and almost avoid crashing into him. So it was a bit of an action packed last lap, but nonetheless happy with the result.

FIA Formula 2: I wanted to bring up the move you pulled on Villagomez to take third place, that was clinical on the brakes into Turn 1, just how on the edge was that to get that one done?

Martí: I thought it was okay. I thought it was nothing too crazy. It was just that he obviously wanted to keep himself in the corner. And then we eventually made contact. But I broke where I thought I could break. Got more than along side, which is what the rule states. And then I had the priority for the corner. So yeah that was a move.

FIA Formula 2: Nicely done, well done today.