Round 7 Post Sprint Race Press Conference

FIA Formula 2: Hello and welcome to Spielberg for the press conference of our top three finishers in today’s FIA Formula 2 Sprint Race. In third place we have Roman Stanek for Invicta Racing, second is Joshua Durksen from AIX Racing and your race winner is Josep María Martí from Campos Racing. Pepe, win number two of the season for you today and you had to work for it, just how pleased are you to secure that victory?

Josep Maria Martí: : Racing here as a Red Bull driver at the Red Bull Ring, home of Red Bull, and just the brand in general it is a great feeling driving here in a Red Bull car. Being able to secure the win in this strategic race is great. We had some slight tyre deg, you had to be quite intelligent while you were driving. I think we all had different approaches and mine came out to be the best, so I am quite happy about it.

FIA Formula 2: Just talk us through the fight with Joshua and the challenge of fighting and timing your overtakes around here.

Martí: : At the beginning he was going flat out and he dropped me out of the DRS, so I was more looking at Roman and keeping him at a decent gap. As of lap six or seven I got the DRS and I was just staying 0.6 or 0.7, I thought I got to do this in two laps, I have to catch him and pass him on the next because otherwise my tyres are going to drop off. That more or less came out. He did throw a nice divebomb into T6 which I wasn’t expecting and then had to get him again on the next lap. It was a nice fight and I am quite happy.

FIA Formula 2: A win from fifth on the grid for you today, despite the grid penalties that you have gotten this weekend, does that increase your hopes of maybe getting some solid points from tomorrows race as well?

Martí: I think my hopes were initially high, I think we know that we have really good pace, especially on the Soft tyre we have always been really quick. Jeddah, on the medium and the Super Soft we were strong, Bahrain we were really strong. Whenever we run on this compound we tend to be really competitive. I was obviously confident. The only thing is that, as you mentioned the grid penalties didn’t help, but I think the main trouble is qualifying ninth, if I qualified on pole and got the grid penalties I would be starting fourth. So there is a bit of everything there but we will see. I am more pleased then anything to come back from it.

FIA Formula 2: Congratulations, Josh coming to you, started P2 and finished P2 but that doesn’t tell the full story, how was that race for you?

Joshua Durksen: Definitely quite hard, as Pepe said I tried to get him out of DRS because I knew that this would be key, as soon as he is into DRS it would be a tough fight for me. I think I did quite a good job, sadly we just didn’t have the pace that Pepe had. At least I could keep up with him in the DRS, the last laps were quite tight after I lost the DRS as my tyres were gone. I tried my best, the car for sure improved compared to last year here, especially on race pace. To be honest, quite happy because we had a nice fight, it was really entertaining I loved it. So yeah really happy.

FIA Formula 2: There were two different occasions there where you were coming under pressure, how much were you looking in your mirrors and picking when and where to defend?

Durksen: I don’t know, you just drive with the peripheral vision, it’s like one eye is in the front and one eye is kind of looking in the mirror and guessing if the guy is there. Luckily Roman’s car is yellow, it is easy to see in the mirror, a Red Bull car is more difficult. You have one eye in the front and one eye in the mirror and just paying attention especially in the braking points because here you can dive bomb. I knew that Roman would do it so I prepared for it. It was good.

FIA Formula 2: It was a good result for you but you have had a tough run of results recently. This is only your second points scoring since your win in Melbourne, how pleased are you to get back on the podium?

Durksen: For sure really pleased, we have had a tough five race weekends in a row. Which of course is really hard, especially for the team, for us because we were hoping to have a smoother season this year. We still work really hard, we kept working hard and luckily we could have a good qualifying and now a good race. Hopefully we can do more of the same tomorrow.

FIA Formula 2: Congratulations on todays result, Roman to you P3 for you today and your first podium of the season, how happy are you with that result?

Roman Stanek: Yeah I’m very happy that we finally managed to get some silverware but also at the same time I think we could have had this already before. We were a bit unlucky and I made some mistakes and some mistakes as a team, it’s good but it’s just a Sprint Race. Tomorrow we are going to try again but happy with this.

FIA Formula 2: How much are you balancing risk and reward today when you know that you have third place in the bag but maybe there is one more position on offer?

Stanek: I was saving my tyres quite a lot so I could attack in the last laps but unfortunately when I was already trying but I know Joshua defends very well. When you are P3 you don’t want to risk it so I was trying to do it on the last lap but then there was an incident behind us which meant I couldn’t open my DRS because of the yellow flag, so it was harder for me to overtake and the fight didn’t continue. I still finished third, it’s not bad but tomorrow we go again and we try and do better as always.

FIA Formula 2: You mentioned some missed opportunities this season, is it just consistency you are looking for now for the rest of the year? Stanek: Yeah I would say consistency, also from my side a little bit. I have a feeling that in F2 Qualifying and the Race are two different sports. One time you drive completely on the limit and the other one you just have to take care of the tyres like a little baby. So just trying to improve my race pace overall which is going in the right direction. I know it is my third year in F2 but the level is very high and we can see also Alex Dunne in F1 performed very well immediately in the car. It is very tough to perform at the top level but we keep working and try to improve every day.

FIA Formula 2: Well done Roman, congratulations everyone.