Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Van Amersfoort Racing’s Enzo Fittipaldi will be on the attack in Formula 2’s races at the Hungaroring having claimed an unexpected but encouraging front row grid spot in qualifying.
The Brazilian had failed to make the top 10 in a qualifying session since round two of the season in March. He qualified fifth there and went on to finish third on the sprint race before winning the feature race on Sunday.
Having qualified inside the top three, a happy Fittipaldi got to tell media including Formula Scout at the Hungaroring about his qualifying form this year.
“We’ve been struggling a lot with the pace in qualifying this season ever since Jeddah. We’ve worked really hard to get here. And I’m happy that today it paid off and we were able to be competitive in qualifying. It was super close at the front there. I’m very satisfied obviously with P2, but wanted the pole. We’ll keep pushing. We’re getting better.”
Fittipaldi, who missed out on pole by 0.068 seconds, could not see such a strong result coming.
“No, I’m going to be honest,” he admitted. I was definitely not expecting to be on the front row today because we’ve been really struggling in qualifying pace and finding the grip. How are you going to expect it if you’re a second-and-a-half off in qualifying at Silverstone? So we’ll just have to learn from it and see why it worked today and try and repeat it for the next rounds.
“It’s been tricky this year with a new car and everything. For us, it’s been really difficult. We’ve really struggled in the European rounds, Australia as well. So it was very frustrating at times. But I feel like we’re learning and improving.”
He added: “I think we are honestly in a good position for the race tomorrow and the feature [race]. At the end, I don’t really have anything to lose. So hopefully we’ll have a good start in both races and be aggressive and be good with the decision-making.”
Setting up the car to preserve the rear tyres proved crucial to Fittipaldi’s qualifying result, shown by being the fastest in sector three.
“We were expecting to really struggle with the rears in sector three, but we didn’t really struggle at all. We approached qualifying the right way because the way we set up the car was to have very good rears in the last sector and it paid off. We did a really good last sector, which that’s basically why I’m in the front row.”