O’Sullivan happy with Feature Race points in early stages of 2024 season

3 March 2024

ART Grand Prix’s Zak O’Sullivan was one of the 2024 rookies to shine on Feature Race debut in Sakhir, securing the French outfit their first points of the year with P7 in the Sprint and a fourth-place finish in the Feature Race.

O’Sullivan had been running inside the podium positions on Saturday but ultimately had to settle for the P4 result as the tyre strategy unfolded and went in their rivals’ favour.

Speaking after his first F2 Feature Race, the Williams Academy Driver indicated that it had been a positive debut weekend regardless, with so many question marks hanging over the first round.

“It’s hard to know what to expect really with it being a new car for everybody. Having got the first weekend out of the way, it wasn’t a bad weekend at all.

“There are some areas for us to work on as a team also for myself to work on. The good thing is that we collected some points on a weekend in which we weren’t the fastest. Not a bad result with P4.”

O’Sullivan also admits that at one stage, he thought he and the team were on course to compete for the race victory, but, the tyre situation began to ebb away from them, ultimately leading to a fight for the upper points-paying positions instead.

“I thought at one point we were on for the win, but it didn’t turn out that way. I think the hard tyres were a bit better than anybody thought they would be.

O'Sullivan believes it has been a positive start to the year but form could vary across the flyaway rounds

“We just had to survive to the end on the soft tyres. But it wasn’t a bad opening weekend and we have a couple of things to work on for Jeddah.”

O’Sullivan’s fourth-place finish in Sakhir put him fifth in the Drivers’ Championship and the Briton was one of six drivers on the grid to secure at least one point in both the Sprint and Feature events.

It leaves him in a strong position going into the second weekend in Jeddah, though he admits that the competitive picture remains fairly unknown with just one round of competitive action in the books.

“Until now, we’ve had three days of testing, but that’s not against everyone else and you don’t know where they all are. Now we’ve had a race weekend, we’ve got the data and know what to look for now, there’s some stuff we can improve for Jeddah.

“It’s a very different circuit so we’ll need to see what each race brings at the beginning part of this season as we’re building up a knowledge base.”

The ART driver added: “I hope a podium is possible, but let’s see. It’s a very different track and there’s different tyre compounds as well. I think it being a new year for everyone, nobody knows really what to expect.

“I think the tyres are performing a little bit different to what everyone’s used to compared to last year. The team was strong there last year, so we’ll see what next weekend brings.”