Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Taylor Barnard thought he had scored his first Formula 2 points when he met the chequered flag in seventh place in the Imola sprint race, but he has since been disqualified.
The rookie driver, racing for the recently rebranded AIX Racing team, was reported to stewards over “an alleged failure to engage the start set-up procedure” on the formation lap, and F2’s technical delegate found that to indeed be the case.
That violated Article 1.6.1 of the championship’s technical regulations and Article 10.15 of the system user manual for its new car, equating to a technical infringement and therefore disqualification.
Barnard had been last in the standings coming into the race, and he would have risen two spots had his race result stood. Instead he remains one of three drivers (with AIX team-mate Joshua Duerksen in that small list) yet to score this season.
Before learning of his disqualification, Barnard made the odd admission that he found his sprint race “a little bit disappointing” because of his “very, very good” launch off the line which – after some chaos further up the order – led to him gaining five places on lap one. He made up no further ground after that, spending almost the entire race in seventh.
Barnard reckoned AIX was “definitely making progress over the last couple of rounds” and since the previous races in Melbourne “could feel that it was a better performing car than what we had before”.
Based on the pace improvement, he added “there is no reason” why points would not be possible in Sunday’s feature race.