F2 | FDA ready for another trio of races: first stage Silverstone

The trio of events between Austria and Hungary saw the drivers of the Ferrari Driver Academy (FDA) competing in the Formula 2 championship achieve some impressive results. We are only at the beginning of a long and challenging season, but the positive signals coming from the Spielberg and Hungaroring circuits have confirmed that the preparation work for the 2020 season has been carried out in the right direction.

Double Silverstone. The calendar has allowed a week's break, but next weekend a second cycle of three stages will begin which will keep teams and riders in suspense until mid-August. We will start with a double appointment on the Silverstone circuit, a track on which Robert Shwartzman will arrive as provisional leader of the championship standings. The twenty-year-old Russian driver made a positive start to his first season in Formula 2, taking victory in the Feature Race in both the second round in Spielberg and at the Hungaroring. The points haul was boosted by three further points finishes, including third place in the first Fauture-Race of the season, a race won by Callum Ilott. Robert started so well in the first three rounds of the championship that he did better than anyone else in the history of GP2/F2, even drivers like Heikki Kovalainen, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

Callum. Ilott also confirmed a good start to the season, and after six races he occupies second position in the general classification with 63 points, 18 less than Shwartzman. In the top-4 of the general classification, the FDA sees three of its five drivers competing in the category. After a less than fortunate start to the season, Mick Schumacher redeemed himself in the Hungarian stage, thanks to a double podium finish which allowed him to move up several positions in the standings. An appointment, the one on the Hungaroring, which instead had the opposite outcome for Marcus Armstrong and Giuliano Alesi, who, despite good speed potential, left Budapest with a stage haul of zero points penalized by unforeseen events.

Tough challenge. “The Silverstone track will require complex work in terms of finding the optimal setup – commented the head of the FDA technical area, Marco Matassa – and it will be a new challenge for the drivers who are competing in their first season in the category. Compared to Austria and Hungary the average lap will be higher, as the chicanes in the second sector are also very fast sections. However, the track also features low-speed corners, which require good traction on exit, and this is what puts the engineers and drivers to the test in finding the right compromise on the set-up front. These are also aspects that are part of a driver's growth, and we are aware that many challenges await us in the next stages of the season, starting with the double round at Silverstone."

Plan. The weekend on the track will start on Friday at 12.55pm local time (13.55pm CET) with the free practice session, followed at 17pm (18pm CET) by the qualifying session. The weekend will get underway on Saturday with the first race, scheduled for 15.45pm (16.45pm CET), and will end on Sunday with the second race starting at 10.10am (11.10am CET).