Hauger wins again with brilliant F2 Baku Feature victory

Fellow Red Bull Junior Jehan Daruvala also had a great weekend, the 23-year-old Indian taking 2nd in the Sprint Race and 4th in the Feature.

Liam Lawson put in a fabulous drive to 3rd in the Sprint race from P9 on the reverse grid. The 20-year-old New Zealander had qualified 2nd behind 21-year-old Estonian Jüri Vips with Hauger 3rd to make it a Red Bull Junior dominated post Qualifying press conference.

Both Lawson and Vips were out of luck in the Feature Race with the Kiwi picking up a puncture and Vips hitting a wall while leading with just a few laps remaining.

Ayumu Iwasa, the 20-year-old Japanese, pushed hard to recover from a disappointing P13 in Qualifying and climbed to 8th in the Sprint Race but was unlucky in the feature.

Hauger forced the error

“Yeah definitely a positive weekend, we had the best Qualifying of the season.»

“Had a good pace in the Sprint Race but unfortunately did the mistake in T3 that didn’t make it better obviously. But we knew we had the pace on Sunday which was the main thing.”

“I really tried to keep some pressure on Jüri and on the lap he crashed I put in a purple Sector 1. I really wanted to make the step to get right behind him before the straight, but then he maybe got stressed or something.”

“He was really pushing so obviously with the small margins it can happen. I’m happy we kept it clean and in the end got our first Feature Race win!”

“So happy for the team. They did a great job and we are looking forward to keeping this progress going.”

Decent Daruvala

“Overall a decent weekend I would say, certainly decent points.”

“Qualifying was really close, a couple of tenths here and there and we could have been on the front row…. But it is what it is.”

“We had really good pace in Race 1 yesterday. I got to the lead pretty early on and I pulled it out to 4 and a half seconds but with only 5 or 6 laps to go we then had two or three Safety Cars and on one of them I lost the lead so that hurt, we came home second.”

“My target today was to get on the podium and that we almost did, I think Drugovich got pretty lucky, he had a damaged car but he could continue to the finish line because the race was finishing under the Safety Car.”

“So in the end that worked out perfectly for him and I couldn’t get on the podium today. But anyway we scored 20 points and all in all it was a strong weekend.”

Lawson’s weekend started well and the speed was there

“A really good start to the weekend, Qualifying went nicely for us. The car was really fast, we actually had the speed for Pole but it was a very messy end to the session and we were at the back of the pit lane as well so warm up was quite tough. But yes, happy to line up P2 for the Feature.”

“The Sprint Race was good, managed to go from 9th to 3rd, the pace was good.”

“Then today, had a decent start, was running 2nd, then we had a slow pit stop which put me out P7 I think, or P8.”

“Then got torpedoed by Doohan from behind, gave me a puncture and that was our race… So, really frustrating because again we had the pace but it’s another weekend coming away with very few points.”

Iwasa takes the lesson and the positives

“Actually it was a really bad weekend for me. Because I had such good pace even in Free Practice and then in Quali. I made a mistake with traffic management in FP so it was not good enough but I had a really good feeling.“

“In Quali it was a very bad situation because it was almost my mistake but there was still a bit of a car issue when I hit the brakes so then I crashed and it was P13.”

“It was really bad and the weekend came from that really.”

“Yesterday the Sprint Race was not too bad, but not great because I was struggling with the car and the tyre. So even though I was managing the tyre well, my speed was not great compared to others. I was pushing quite hard.”

“I think the car balance was very good, but, not quick so I think we have to find a solution for it.”

“I had a crash today when we had the Safety Car restart. It was a really bad accident, everyone went flat, then someone hit the brake. I couldn’t avoid a crash… it was not my mistake and it was really very bad.”

“But if I had been P1 or at the front in Quali then I would not have been in the position to have this crash in the Feature Race so it means that I created the bad situation this weekend. So I want to say sorry to the team, still we can see positive things and we will be back and get better results.”

Sprint Race
1. F. Vesti (ART) 48m 36.014s

2. J. Daruvala (Prema) +0.380s

3. L. Lawson (Carlin) +1.102s

8. A. Iwasa (Dams) +3.246s

12. J. Vips (Hitech) +8.027s
DNF D. Hauger (Prema) Incident

F2 Championship after 12 of 28 races – Next Round Silvertone July 2/3

1. F. Drugovich (MP) 132 points
2. T. Pourchaire (ART) 83
3. J. Daruvala (Prema) 73

5. D. Hauger (Prema) 55
7. J. Vips (Hitech) 51
10. L. Lawson (Carlin) 44
14. A. Iwasa (Dams) 29