2018 Round 6 Sprint Race Press Conference

FIA Formula 2: Welcome to the FIA Formula 2 Championship press conference following today’s Sprint Race at the Red Bull Ring. Joining us are race winner Artem Markelov for RUSSIAN TIME, in second place is George Russell for ART Grand Prix and in third, Sergio Sette Camara for Carlin. Artem, starting with you; that was a colossal comeback a tough weekend in France, it’s your second sprint race win, your third win of 2018 and your eighth win in Formula 2. Would it be fair you say you won today’s race on the last lap of the Feature Race?

Artem Markelov: Yesterday’s race was much harder than today because I was starting from P18, and I had to manage the tyres on a bit of a different strategy compared to everyone else, because we started on a harder tyre to the people around us. With two safety cars our strategy was nearly crushed, but we were pretty good in the whole race and in the last two laps we changed the tyres and that was pretty good – I was able to push and trying to get closer to all the guys in front of us. The engineer told me that the group in front was P8, and it was pretty nice when I overtook the three cars in Turn 3, it was a bit on the limit when I was going on the grass, and I was like “oh, I need to brake a bit” and the car started sliding into the corner. But we had a lot of grip on the brakes, and had better traction than Ferrucci on the exit.

FIA Formula 2: It left you in the perfect position to lead from lights-to-flag today. How was the race for you, were you concerned at all by George in the closing stages?

Artem: At the start of the race I was struggling a bit with the pace, trying to save the tyres at the start but my teammate was pushing me a bit, what I was trying to do was get a gap…sorry, giving him DRS – sorry to the team principal! – because if I could give him the DRS the guys behind were coming quicker and quicker and we were just trying to play our game…my game, not ours! laughs. I was just trying to get the pace and when George overtook Makino, he was trying to get closer to me so all the race I was trying to push and create gap on the last few laps.

FIA Formula 2: Coming to you, George; it was a good start and we saw you rocketing away, could you talk us through the opening laps and your charge through the field?

George Russell: Yeah, I had great confidence in my car after the installation laps, so in my mind when I set off I was going to attack in the early phases of the race. I knew I was taking a big risk because I saw the tyre degradation yesterday, and I managed to get up to P2 very quickly. But as I’ve said previously, Artem’s race pace is always absolutely incredible, and what he did yesterday with the two safety cars – it shouldn’t have been possible for him to finish where he did, so I knew it would have been very difficult to challenge him for the win. Because I was attacking in the early phases, I thought it would be best to consolidate P2, look after the tyres and try to bring it home – and that’s exactly what we did, it was a fantastic race and I’m really happy to come back on the podium again.

FIA Formula 2: You’re now leading the championship, and in commentary Johnny Herbert called your performance an “absolute masterclass”. How was your race, was there much tyre degradation and was it alright at the end?

George: It was alright, I think we expected a bit more considering what happened yesterday, but as I mentioned in the press conference yesterday, with limited practice and not having any long runs it’s very difficult to anticipate what’s going to happen in the race. I think there was a lot of battling going on yesterday and it was very tricky for the drivers on the fresher tyres because there were some drivers yet to pit directly ahead of us. You saw a lot of battling, and peoples’ tyres were going away very quickly, so that was something at the back of our minds and it was maybe a false impression of what was going to happen today. It wasn’t easy, and it’s been a bit of a surprise this weekend as people usually think Spielberg’s fairly easy on the tyres – when in fact, it’s been one of the worst so far – so there’s things to take away from this weekend.

FIA Formula 2: Moving on to you, Sergio, it’s your fourth podium of the season and we saw you have a good fight with George here – talk us through the race from your perspective.

Sergio Sette Camara: Yeah, at the start I had a similar mindset to George, but it didn’t play out the same way for us. I judged that Artem’s and Makino’s pace was too quick to finish the race as I expected a lot of degradation, so I just decided to pull as big a gap as possible as I also had a lot of problems with overheating brakes and tyres. At the same time, you need to be careful not to miss out on the DRS otherwise you get overtaken and it’s a downward spiral – everyone overtakes you. So yeah, after I got through that stage I started attacking and Makino seemed to pay the price for pushing too much. I got that position, but afterwards it was about trying to catch George, but if you push too hard the tyres are so sensitive, and if you get a little bit of oversteer or understeer you already feel the tyres with less grip on the next corner. Like George said, as we don’t do long runs it’s hard to judge, even with a race done yesterday. It’s one of the things that makes racing in Formula 2 so interesting. Unfortunately we couldn’t catch George, but it was an alright race finishing in P3.

FIA Formula 2: You collected a nice haul of points here. What’s your expectations going into Silverstone?

Sergio: I’m happy with the points from today, but not so happy with the points of this weekend – 18 points is a good amount but it’s not enough, especially considering that I had a good qualifying and in this championship when you have pace, you need to extract more than 18 points, so maybe if in Silverstone we don’t have that pace, then we needed to have something to compensate for that. Because of the bad luck yesterday with the double pitstop, it could be a 20-plus point weekend and to come away with 18, we should have done more. But I’m still happy to come away with points.

FIA Formula 2: Coming back to you, Artem, you turned what could have been a bad result into a sensational result. How does that shape your expectations for Silverstone?

Artem: First of all I want to say I was joking about my teammate! laughs For Silverstone, my expectations are trying to do the best – hopefully with the car, everything will be okay and I’ll try to have a good qualifying and get good points. As Sergio said, we need to score as many points a possible and the points I was scoring today was also not enough fighting for the top three.