Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins rued the slow pit-stop that cost him victory in the shortened Formula 2 feature race at Baku.
The Alpine F1 junior showed really strong pace, going from third to first place in the first stint with the supersoft tyre. However, traffic in the pit-lane when he was about to get released from his box meant he dropped back to fourth place.
After that, he benefitted from and incident between Rodin Motorsport’s Zane Maloney and Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli to gain second place, but he then ran out of time to attack Trident’s race winner Richard Verschoor.
Following the race, Martins told media including Formula Scout that his slow pit-stop had “100% sure” cost him the victory, but he wasn’t too fussed as he didn’t know the reason behind it yet.
“It’s life, you need to accept and move on,” he said. “What I can reflect on it’s just the pit-stops we did since the beginning of the year have always been one of the fastest, always. So they have done a mega job since the beginning and I cannot blame them today because they do a mistake.
“I still don’t know if I also did a mistake there for them to take more time to do a pit-stop. So I still need to see with them and just to move on and not do it again.
“The pace was mega today from lap one to the end on super-soft, on soft. For sure, it’s good for confidence for Qatar and now we just need to keep this positive.
“What I like is that I know how to push 100% without actually going over the limit with the tyre,” Martins reflected on his race. “I was saving, but smartly. You know, like still being able to be fast and overtake Kimi and Richard, and pull away.
“The pit-stop was the weakest part of the race. After that, it was like ‘I need to do it again’. And I was on it until the safety car came out. And with the race also shortened, it was not so easy to be able to have the time to do it also.”
Meanwhile, Verschoor doubted he could have held onto the lead until the end if it wasn’t for the safety car that was deployed with just over two minutes to the end.
“He [Martins] was quicker on the super-soft. He passed me. Then, I had the very good pit-stop, so I was in front, and he was just catching from, I think, three seconds back,” Verschoor said. “And at some point when the gap went from 2.1 to 1.6 or something, I was like ‘I’m not gonna make this’. And then I did some qualifying laps, and then the gap started to reduce slower.
“Of course, the VSC in the end helped me. I think it would have been tight. I’m not sure if I still would have lost it, but it would have been tight.”