Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Zane Maloney was “happy to bring home P2” in Formula 2’s Silverstone feature race, but felt he could have won with a smoother outlap after his pitstop.
The Rodin Motorsport driver finished 1.657 seconds behind Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar, both benefiting from a penalty to DAMS’ on-the-road winner Jak Crawford.
“Yesterday was a good race, today again a good race,” said Maloney after his second consecutive runner-up finish.
“Starting from P9, I had a good start and just generally had good pace on the softs and the hards, made good moves. The one thing, we didn’t get Isack, which if I did a few things better at the start of the hard [compound] stint maybe I could’ve had a chance. But Jak and Isack did a really good job, and the three of us were pushing flatout every single lap of the race.”
He then said to Formula Scout: “Everything you do on the tyre in terms of sliding, it lasts quite a long time and you remember it at the end of the race. When I came out of the pits, I had to slide around a lot to keep Ollie [Bearman] behind. I was defending for a full lap. You are killing the fronts, you’re killing the rears, and then it becomes okay for the rest of the race, let’s say, but then you feel it a bit more at the end when you’ve used the tyre a bit more.
“From my side, sliding a bit less on the outlap, have a bit of a better in-lap. There’s so many different things that you can do [better].”
Drivers faced tricky conditions, with a low-grip track surface after morning rain and unpredictable wind.
“When it’s low grip, you have a bit of everything. A bit of understeer, oversteer,” Maloney explained. “At the start the track was a bit damp. After the safety car, it was fully dry again. It’s quite windy out there, so it’s drying quite quickly, but that also makes it quite difficult when it’s very windy. Every lap you come to a corner, it’s different. We saw a lot of people having moments and spins or slides.
“The soft tyre was quite weak this weekend. I was expecting it to be a bit better in the race, but it didn’t really seem to last very long. The safety car helped us to extend a bit.”
Crawford was not caught out by the tyre, explaining: “We knew that the soft tyre was going to be a quick tyre to get off of. We only thought [it] was going to go three or four laps and we were banking on safety cars because with heavy fuel, the current conditions we have, there’s no way that our soft tyre was going to make six laps. So we got a little bit lucky, but it’s a part of the game. And I was honestly a bit surprised that the soft wasn’t very quick at the end even on no fuel.”