Photo: Red Bull
Pepe Marti feels his decision making in “complete mayhem” was key to his charge from 11th to win the Bahrain Formula 2 sprint race.
The Campos Racing driver rose from sixth following a safety car restart with five laps to go, taking the lead from Joshua Duerksen at the start of the last tour, with Richard Verschoor following him past to finish second.
“I had so many close calls,” Marti told media including Formula Scout afterwards. “I hit poor Richard in T6 a bit with I think four laps to go or something.
“It was a crazy race from start to end, and I think we managed it pretty well. I was just taking my chances, and in the last few laps, honestly, it was a lottery, like there was not much I could do. I was just going into the corner and saying, ‘OK, there’s two guys on the inside. I’m going to try to get a switchback’. And it could have worked, it could have not worked. Today went my way.
“I think on restarts, especially at a track like this, where overtaking is quite easy, you’re looking around 360 degrees. Into the first corner on the restart, I think it was Richard and [Alex] Dunne, or someone going quite deep, and I thought I had margin to cut back, and I got hit by Roman [Stanek] entering Turn 1 so I was full opposite lock, trying not to spin.
“It was complete mayhem. But I think I made the right choices, and I think that’s something that I’ve always been quite good at, driving through the field, making the right decisions in wheel-to-wheel racing.”
Second allowed Verschoor to take the points lead after Duerksen was disqualified from third for a technical infringement.
“I sent it a bit on Dino [Beganovic] and then Pepe got past, and then he got past Joshua, and then it was a bit of a mess,” the MP Motorsport driver said. “I wanted to go for the move in T10, but [Duerksen] blocked me off. Then I went outside and switched back and then he out-braked himself a bit into T11, then I had the nice switchback and kept my foot in around the outside of T12.”
While drivers were frantically fighting for position, they also had to consider tyre management on the abrasive Sakhir surface.
“When you’re fighting, you’re taking a lot more out of the tyres,” Marti said. “When I got past Dunne, I started managing quite well, but I managed too much, and he was able to send it on me. So from then on, I was between Luke [Browning] and Alex, trying to more or less save, not save. I was quite jealous of Richard because he was just at the back of the DRS [train] waiting, saving his tyres.
“But I think it depends on what the situation is in the race, because after the first safety car, I was most concerned about my tyres, and after the second safety car, I think I followed Richard’s pace for two laps, more or less saving a bit the tyres and then the last four laps was full gas and hope for the best.”
Verschoor added: “Every fight you do, extra change of direction, pushing more on traction, it’s hurting the tyres a bit. You can cool them down a bit as well afterwards, but you can just feel when you start to push more that you lose the grip.
“It’s a bit of a thin line of how much you can push, but it makes it as exciting as it was today.”
Additional reporting by Alejandro Alonso Lopez