Sérgio Sette Câmara put his DAMS machine on top of the timesheets during Free Practice to begin a weekend of incredible action at Circuit Paul Ricard, and kept it there in qualifying to secure only his second pole position in F2. ART Grand Prix’s Nyck de Vries seared off the line in the Feature Race, leaping from P4 to P1 into the first corner, as the Dutchman continued his red hot form to make it two Feature Race wins in a row. Home-grown hero Anthoine Hubert then basked in the glory of Sprint Race success to complete a thrilling weekend.

 

De Vries (121 pts) extended his Championship lead over Nicholas Latifi (109 pts) to 12 points, with Campos Racing’s Jack Aitken (85 pts) 24 points further back in third; DAMS continue to lead the way in the Teams’ Championship with 189 points, 46 ahead of UNI-Virtuosi Racing (143 pts) in second. ART remain third with 127 points.

 

Round 6 of the season takes place at the Red Bull Ring in the scenic Styrian mountains. Despite the short circuit length the drivers will look to push hard on the smooth surface, and with Pirelli supplying the teams with Soft and Super Soft tyre compounds, we should see plenty of intense wheel-to-wheel action.

 

 

“I remember when I first went to Spielberg without knowing the track I had a look at the map. It looks pretty simple but there are definitely challenges. First of all it's a short track and from the outside it looks very easy going, but it's important to have very good car balance because there are a lot of high speed corners with gravel traps which don’t allow you to make mistakes. There are very unforgiving sausage kerbs on the exit of corners too which catch out a lot drivers.

 

“It's a real driver’s track and a very good overtaking arena, especially in Sector 1, so it's a lot of fun for racing. Qualifying laps around the track look spectacular on on-board cameras with a combination of high-speed and slow-speed corners. It’s a very fun and enjoyable place to be.

 

“It has a very smooth tarmac surface which allows you to push in every lap which again makes it fun for fighting with other cars. It's one of the easier places for tyre management which allows you focus on the race.

 

“If you have a chance of starting on pole it's always better than starting further back, although if you don't have a good start from pole it's very easy to be overtaken there on the run down to Turns 2 and 3. You can win or lose a lot of time in Sector 3, with high-speed Turns 7, 8, 9 and 10 but you have to make sure you're well within the track limits and not overusing the sausage kerbs because they can hurt!

 

“I expect myself to do the best job that I can at every race, so hopefully I can deliver that and see where that puts us.”