Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Formula 2 held a shakedown session on the Wednesday between its first two rounds of the season at the Red Bull Ring in response to widespread reliability problems.
The championship’s season opener was inflicted by a variety of technical issues that struck teams across the 22-car grid, with Virtuosi Racing’s Guanyu Zhou being denied feature race victory when he had a problem that struck while leading.
Engine and electrical issues also prevented drivers from participating in some sessions, with drivers at Hitech GP and Trident reporting that problems that afflicted them were out of the teams’ hands.
Bruno Michel, F2’s CEO, spoke about the technical issues in a post-race weekend column on the championship website:
“We’ve experienced some reliability issues last weekend which need our full attention. They can be explained in part by the fact that the cars have not been running since our pre-season testing in early March.
“We take the matter extremely seriously and had to react quickly. Therefore, we have organised a shakedown this Wednesday with all 22 cars at the Red Bull Ring in order for the teams to check their machines ahead of round two.
“There will be no laptimes taken over the short session. We just want to ensure that the problems are understood and resolved before racing resumes.”
A paddock source has claimed that some of the issues that struck teams in F2 and the supporting FIA Formula 3 Championship were also evident in March’s pre-season test in Bahrain, and that fixes had been expected to be available by the time teams started racing in Austria.