Pepe Martí experiences a weekend of ups and downs in Imola, ending with an unfortunate pit stop while he was fighting to enter the points. The Barcelona driver had to halt his comeback in the first race due to a penalty.
“It hasn't been a good weekend, despite having a car with pace. In free practice, even though we didn't finish in a good position, the sectors were very good, and we had speed.”
This weekend marked the fourth round of Formula 2, held during the F1 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, where Pepe Martí had to settle for the lessons learned from each session. On Friday, in qualifying, he didn't achieve the best result, ending up in fourteenth place, the grid position from which he would start both races of the weekend.
In the first race, Pepe miraculously avoided the multi-car collision that occurred after the start and managed to position himself in ninth place. He was climbing positions but had to serve a "stop and go" penalty because, during the formation lap, he had regained a lost position beyond the regulatory limit.
"It hasn't been a good weekend, despite having a car with pace. In the free practice session, even though we didn't finish in a good position, the sectors were very good, and we had speed. In qualifying, we also had pace. Maybe not to win the races, but definitely to be within the top five. Between mistakes and bad luck, we couldn't score points," commented Pepe.
In the second race, he was one of six drivers who decided to start with a different strategy, using medium tyres while the drivers ahead opted for softer compounds. The strategy could have placed him in the top eight, a good result considering he started 14th. Pepe fought hard to keep the drivers behind him and had a chance for points after the pit stop he had to make. Unfortunately, this chance didn't materialize: in the pits, he had bad luck when a rival, who had stopped ahead of him, lost one of his changed wheels. This wheel hit one of the Campos mechanics' tyre guns, and Pepe's left rear tyre wasn't properly fixed. The wheel came off the car as he was leaving the pits, forcing him to retire.
"It's a shame because it's one of those weekends, like in Melbourne, where you know there's potential, you know the car is performing well, and obviously not being able to score points is very hard. Besides that, I'm happy with the performance, happy with the fact that we were fast, and now we have another opportunity just around the corner in Monaco. Now we're focusing on that, changing our mindset, and trying to recover and score points. We also need to understand why things happen and move forward. The goal is to improve and grow step by step. On Wednesday, we're back on a circuit, so we're going all out."
Formula 2 returns next week without rest at the Monaco circuit.
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