Photo: Prema
Ollie Bearman and Jak Crawford had to be “patient” in their pursuit of the overtakes that earned them first and second places in the Formula 2 sprint race at Qatar.
The mild DRS effect and the dirty air made following and overtaking difficult at the Lusail circuit. Nevertheless, both drivers benefited from being on the hard tyre while their immediate rivals ran the medium compound.
Prema’s Bearman lost the race lead at turn 10 on lap two to Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar, who quickly built a gap of almost four seconds. From lap six, the Ferrari junior progressively closed on the Red Bull protegee, and eventually regained first place under braking at turn on lap 21 of 23.
“I was trying to be patient but the lap count was dropping,” Bearman said after the race. “At one stage in the race I was catching him quite a lot, but then when you get within kind of two-and-a-half seconds, you start to struggle a bit more. You pick up some dirty air. And the DRS detection is at the end of all the fast corners. So it’s really hard to follow. And especially with those medium tyres, he was dropping in right corners, but in left corners he was still quicker than me, with the softer compound. It was a tough one. I was really having to fight for it. When I did get the chance to go for it, I had to go all in.
“I was far and I was trying to kind of make him not think I’m coming,” he explained about his move after Hadjar was slow out of the last corner. “I went for it at the last minute and he left me just enough space. He did close the door a little bit, but it made sense. I managed to put my nose in and go through. I knew that once I got into the corner I actually had more grip in the right-hand, as he was struggling a bit with the front-left. So once I was alongside it was move done, But it was a risky one.”
Then at turn four, Hadjar spun and dropped to fourth place, which promoted Crawford to second place.
The American had endured a hard-fought 17-lap battle with ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins to reach the podium positions. They ran half-a-second apart most of the time and had several side-by-side moments before Crawford eventually drove past at turn one.
“It was a crazy battle,” said the DAMS driver. “I felt like we were battling almost every lap into turn one. There were about five laps there where we battled through the whole middle sector. But it was a tough battle. There were some moments that were quite on the edge of racing. At the end of the day, I knew I had to be patient. I knew I was gonna get him at some point. I just had to be patient as his tyres would drop off at the end.”