Red flag provided timely “breather” for De Vries

Leant against the barrier, head down, arms folded, awaiting the restart of the Feature Race following a red flag, Nyck de Vries appeared confident and composed. He looked up and gave the cameras a smile and a wave – it told the story of a man in his element, it was going to be his day.

When the PREMA of Mick Schumacher collided with Tatiana Calderon and brought out that red flag, it threatened to derail the Dutchman’s dominance in the Principality. He had built up a strong 6s gap between himself and Luca Ghiotto in second and would need to start from scratch. But instead of worrying, he enjoyed the momentary respite.

“Obviously, you'd rather just have a smooth race,” he assessed. “But, to be honest I didn't mind too much about the red flag because it gave us a bit of a breather. Even though I had a comfortable gap to Luca and it didn't make our strategy easier, for me personally I didn't mind a little bit of a breather.”

With the gap desecrated, ART were forced to use a second set of Softs in an attempt to re-establish their lead ahead of the mandatory pit stop, potentially compromising his Sprint Race today.

With those behind him on the same strategy also changing, it was necessary collateral in his hunt for the victory and would ultimately pay dividends. “I'm just extremely pleased with today's race,” he continued. “It was very tough, I knew it was going to be tough. I knew we had the pace but a red flag halfway through the race was far from ideal because we only had 19 laps left to make a 25 second gap.

“We were forced to put our other set of prime tyres on to have new rubber and enough pace to pull a gap. I think we really deserved this one. We just did our job and I'm happy for the team and myself that we got this one.”

The Dutch driver was one of the favourites ahead of the new season, but suffered a slow start and fell behind Nicholas Latifi, Ghiotto and Jack Aitken, who all enjoyed early victories. Since then, back-to-back wins have shaken up the order and lifted him to within one point of current leader Latifi.

He could yet take the Championship lead this weekend, but chose to cool expectations ahead of Race 2, saying: “I think we've been very calm from the start of the season. We take it step-by-step and weekend-by-weekend, and we kind of knew that we were going to have a strong package here.

“I really like the track so I'm happy that we managed to benefit from that and execute our potential. There's still an extremely long way to go. It's nice, but honestly I'm already thinking about Saturday, trying to survive with what we have and let's see what we can bring home."