Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Frederik Vesti said his fourth victory of the 2023 Formula 2 season in the sprint race at Silverstone “meant a lot” with race engineer Pedro Matos absent from the pit-wall.
The Prema driver enjoyed a “quite calm” race on Saturday from reversed-grid pole position despite challenging track conditions and ended up 13 seconds ahead of his main championship rival Theo Pourchaire at the chequered flag.
“Just in general, this victory means a lot to me,” he said. “My engineer is not here this weekend. He’s at home with some personal issues and to win like this is very, very important to me and show that we can still have a strong team. But I’m definitely looking forward to having him back.”
Vesti has a strong record with Matos, who engineered him to the Formula Regional European Championship in 2019 before they stepped up to FIA Formula 3 together in 2020, and were reunited in F2 this year.
“Pedro Matos, my engineer, is by far the best engineer I’ve worked with so far in my junior career,” Vesti added in reply to Formula Scout. “He’s not here this weekend, which is obviously a disadvantage. And still be able to win can just give me and the whole team a lot of confidence.
“I just want also to say thank you to Prema because they are really supportive to him. They are really still giving me the support I need in order to do a good job this weekend. So we’re here to score the maximum points we can and then we are ready again to fight with Pedro in Budapest.”
With enough standing water on track to require three formation laps behind the safety car and Pourchaire struggling for visibility behind, Vesti was able to pull away out front.
“In the beginning, I had a bit of pressure. I wanted to pull a gap to be sure I could have a bit more calm race later,” he explained. “I think the way we expected and hoped the race to go, it was actually the way it went, which was really nice. I was able to pull a big gap and manage at the end.
“I think we have found something on the wet which is working really well in Prema.”
Vesti was forced to retire from Sunday’s feature race but still leads the standings by six points over Pourchaire.
“An unfortunate race day,” he said. “It was positive after a very good start from P10 to P7 and then boxed quite early to go for a good undercut which seemed very attractive. The safety car came and it was the worst possible timing which was very unfortunate and brought us down to P16. Then I got hit from behind during the safety car and had to retire the car.
“We reset, we come back, we still have the win from yesterday and the championship lead, and we continue to push.”