2019 Round 6 post-Sprint Race press conference

FIA Formula 2: Hello and welcome to the press conference with the top three finishers in today's FIA Formula 2 Sprint Race here in Austria. We are joined by race winner Sérgio Sette Câmara for DAMS, in second place is Luca Ghiotto for UNI-Virtuosi Racing and in third place is Nyck de Vries for ART Grand Prix. Sérgio, your second win in Formula 2, it was a tough one today just talk us through it.

Sérgio Sette Câmara: Yeah, not an easy race! I had to go a bit quicker than I wanted in the beginning of the race to keep Louis Delétraz behind. He was attacking me quite a lot and was always within the DRS zone. I couldn't pull away. I knew it would be hard at the end of the race because yesterday we suffered so much, well me not so much but I saw that if you pushed you would pay a price. It was a tricky race because I had no choice other than to push in the beginning and I had to hold Luca in the end. I knew someone would have better pace in the end, someone that could manage their pace a bit better in the beginning, but thankfully we could regain first position and take this win. Even though it's a Sprint Race it's another win and it's good to have a good result. It's always a motivation boost for me and everyone around me. It's a great thing.

FIA Formula 2: You mentioned thinking someone behind you might have a bit better pace towards the end of the race, so what was the feeling when the safety car came out? Was that good for you to look after your tyres, or was that going to be a problem? Sérgio: When it came out I knew I was in trouble because I was on the limit of my tyres. I pulled a gap and to do that you pay a price for it, you damage your tyres. The guys that didn't they closed the gap, obviously the safety car bunches everyone back up. When I saw it was Luca behind me I knew that was one of the cars, you know, DAMS and Virtuosi this year have been exceptional with race management, so it was not great news when I heard it. He had better pace but I had a good restart, a good few corners, and I pulled away. At one point it was a four second gap which he slowly took back, but thankfully the race finished. He says he also had bad tyres but my tyres were in really bad shape so it was a close call.

FIA Formula 2: Well done today. Luca moving on to you. You said you were happy with second place yesterday even though you really want to be getting that Feature Race win, but are you even happier with this second place today?

Luca Ghiotto: Yeah probably. Nyck De Vries probably deserves to be higher than me because he was leading the race at one point, so I'd say I probably deserve to be on the other side of the table today - P3. These two guys did a better job than I did but I will take P2 of course. It was close to Sérgio, but as Sérgio said the safety car backed up all of us at the end. He'd had a five second gap I think until that moment. I had better tyres than him but it was just not enough to try and have a go at him. He deserved the win. I'm happier with this second place than yesterdays for sure, especially starting from P7.

FIA Formula 2: How difficult was it in those final few laps to judge whether to make a move because it was for the win, or to try and take the points for second?

Luca: It's always tough. On the first lap after the safety car Sérgio pulled away quite a lot and I thought he had better pace than I did. I took it a bit easier and after that I was gaining I think a couple of tenths per lap, until the point I got to the DRS zone. As I said, I think my pace probably was just a couple of tenths quicker and when you are just a tiny bit quicker than the car in front as soon as you get into the dirty air you just start to have the same pace. You can't really get close to him. The last lap was probably the closest to him but still not enough to have a go. I think I was always around six or seventh tenths behind, not really close like three or four, so it was not enough. Sérgio did a great job today, as did Nyck to recover after the problem that he had, so I'm happy with this second place.

FIA Formula 2: Thank you very much. Nyck we'll move on to you. Everyone's so nice to each other here in Formula 2! They're saying you should have won this race. Just talk us through the issue you had early on and the recovery after that.

Nyck de Vries: I was very happy with my first couple of laps. I was attacking and going for the lead quickly because obviously it's nice to be in clean air. Unfortunately at the exit of Turn 4 the pit-limiter switched on and it took me some time to realise what had happened. It almost felt like I'd lost drive. I tried to deactivate it but it didn't deactivate so I'm uncertain what happened. It might be my own mistake but if you have two hands on the steering wheel it's quite hard to touch it! We dropped back and made a good recovery. The team worked well overnight to find some pace because yesterday we were not strong enough. To be honest, even though we didn't win, I think sometimes it's satisfying still being here and I think today is one of those days.

FIA Formula 2: What about the end of that race? As you said, you'd taken some life out of your tyres early on to get into the lead and then you had to defend hard from Mick Schumacher on that final lap.

Nyck: Honestly the safety car was very unfair on us because we'd made a massive gap over the others. Of course our pace at the start of the race was quite a lot quicker, so at this kind of track where degradation is a big part of the game, you favour the others quite a lot. That's part of racing. Obviously race direction has to prioritise safety in these cases so it's not a judgement on them, but it was not in our favour. Luckily we had enough left to keep Mick Schumacher behind I'm happy with this weekend.

FIA Formula 2: Well done today. Sérgio just returning to you. Looking at the weekend as a whole, it's been a strong haul of points for you. Is that circuit-specific or are you hoping you can carry this form through to the next round?

Sérgio: Actually it was a very poor in qualifying I think. I'm not sure but maybe it was the worst qualifying this season. We managed to get good points though, so I'm happy with that and I'm happy that we had good pace in the race. It's not every race we're going to have degradation. Like I said before about DAMS and Virtuosi, DAMS definitely does a great job with the race pace. The biggest focus is to fix qualifying. We were quick in Paul Ricard but then super slow here. Nyck is doing a good job and is quick kind of everywhere, so either I or the team or both need to adapt to make sure we are more consistently quick no matter which track we're at, no matter the characteristics of the tarmac and so on. I'm happy to have grabbed a good haul of points but I need to work hard and keep pushing for the next round to make sure that the pace is there in quali and in races.