Felipe Drugovich dominated Sunday’s sprint race at the Red Bull Ring, leading from pole to take his maiden Formula 2 victory.
The MP Motorsport rookie got a clean getaway from reverse grid pole to set up an early lead from Louis Deletraz on the front row. Behind them third place changed multiple times over the first lap as Giuliano Alesi came under pressure from Dan Ticktum, Robert Shwartzman and Marcus Armstrong all at once.
The battle was resolved by the end of the first lap when Alesi pulled off to the side of the track with flames pouring from the rear of his HWA. The safety car was brought out to recover Alesi, with Armstrong assuming third over Ticktum and Shwartzman.
Alesi’s car was quickly cleared but the safety car was redeployed multiple times in the following laps. First when Sean Gelael ground to a halt, again when Luca Ghiotto was spun out of the race by Jehan Daruvala, and for the final time on lap 15 when Armstrong lost drive and stopped on track, handing third place to Ticktum.
Dan Ticktum, DAMS (Carl Bingham, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
When the safety car pulled in for the last time on lap 16 Drugovich rapidly pulled away from Deletraz and was out of range by the time DRS was enabled. Behind them, Ticktum managed to drop Shwartzman and open a gap to protect third place from the Prema.
The podium positions remained unchanged for the final 12 laps of the race, with Drugovich winning by 2.3s from Deletraz and Ticktum. Shwartzman finished fourth ahead of ART’s Christian Lundgaard.
Nobuharu Matsushita took sixth place after a long battle with Mick Schumacher, who made early progress from P11 on the grid but couldn’t find a way to continue past Matsushita. Jack Aitken took the final point of the day in eighth.
At the end of the first F2 round of the season, Callum Ilott leads the championship with 27 points, four ahead of Shwartzman with Drugovich a further two points back. ART heads the teams’ championship by five points from UNI-Virtuosi, with MP Motorsport in third.
F2 returns next weekend at the Red Bull Ring again, supporting the Formula 1 Styrian Grand Prix.
Valtteri Bottas has taken victory at a chaotic Austrian Grand Prix that saw just eleven cars reach the chequered flag, with Charles Leclerc in P2 and Lando Norris claiming his first ever podium in P3. Lewis Hamilton finished second on the road but dropped to fourth due to a five-second penalty he received for a collision with Alex Albon.
The race was sedate enough for the first ten laps. Bottas built up a 3.2-second gap to Verstappen, while Norris slipped back to P5 behind Albon and Hamilton. On lap 11, though, Verstappen lost power on the approach to Turn 3 and told his engineer that his car kept going into anti-stall. He limped back to the pits and retired on lap 13.
LAT Images
The next casualties were Daniel Ricciardo and Lance Stroll. Ricciardo pulled into his garage with a cooling issue while Stroll, who had been struggling with a lack of power for several laps, retired due to a sensor issue.
Bottas had built up a six-second gap to Hamilton by lap 17, but on lap 21 Hamilton set a new fastest lap and began to reel his team-mate in. Four laps later, the gap was down to 3.8 seconds.
Lap 26 saw the first safety car of the race, brought out due to Kevin Magnussen suffering a brake failure at Turn 3. A flurry of pitstops ensued with every driver opting for the hard tyres except for Perez, who went with the mediums.
When the safety car period ended, Vettel lunged down the inside of Carlos Sainz going into Turn 3. He misjudged the attempt and span, dropping down the order to P15. While the incident was noted, no investigation was deemed necessary by the stewards.
On lap 42, Bottas and Hamilton were warned about sensor issues that had been detected in the gearbox of both cars and were told to stay off the kerbs. This warning was repeated several times and the gap between the two widened as Hamilton eased off slightly. Despite this apparent issue, the duo were still over ten seconds ahead of third-placed Alex Albon.
Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
Lap 51 saw the next retirements. George Russell ground to a halt from what had been a promising P12 and brought out the second safety car of the day. Romain Grosjean, meanwhile, ran off the track at the final corner and pulled into the pits with seemingly the same brake problem that curtailed team-mate Magnussen’s race.
Red Bull chose to bring in Albon for a change to the soft tyres, losing P3 to Perez in the process, while both Mercedes stayed out on hard tyres that had already completed 25 laps by that point.
The Safety Car came in on lap 54 briefly, after which Albon re-took third place from Perez after Perez locked up going into Turn 3.
At that exact moment, however, the safety car was brought out again, this time because Kimi Raikkonen’s front-left tyre had come clean off the chassis going into the final corner. It was initially unclear whether it was Albon or Perez who had been ahead at the moment the safety car came out, but it was decided a few laps later that Albon had been slightly ahead of Perez and thus the Red Bull driver slotted into P3.
Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
Lap 60 saw the safety car come back in and Albon set about chasing after Hamilton on his newer soft tyres. He saw an opportunity going into Turn 4 and went for it, only for the two to come to blows. Albon span and fell down the order to last place. The incident was duly noted and investigated, with Hamilton being given a five-second penalty.
Albon slowed a couple of laps later, saying over the radio that his engine was stopping. He wound up finishing P13, or last.
Between lap 64 and lap 66, Leclerc got past Norris and then Perez to find himself in P3 behind the Mercedes duo. It looked as if Perez was in with a shout of finishing on the podium due to Hamilton’s penalty, only for his hopes to be dashed when he was awarded a five-second penalty of his own for speeding in the pitlane and then being overtaken by Norris.
Lap 70 saw the last retirement of the race when one of Daniil Kvyat’s tyres disintegrated going into Turn 1. He managed to bring the car to a stop behind the barriers at a marshall post.
Bottas crossed the line to take the chequered flag at the end of lap 71 with Hamilton in P2, Leclerc in P3 and Norris in P4. Hamilton’s penalty, though, dropped him to P4 and promoted Leclerc to second and Norris to the final podium position.
Callum Ilott took his first Formula 2 victory at the Red Bull Ring feature race, after his teammate Guanyu Zhou dropped out of the lead with technical problems.
Ilott and polesitter Zhou dominated the early stages of the race together with Prema’s Mick Schumacher, who leapt up into third place at the start after passing star of qualifying Felipe Drugovich.
The two UNI-Virtuosi drivers traded the lead throughout the first corners of the race, before Zhou managed to make a move stick and set about breaking the DRS range back to Ilott. But Zhou lost the position again after his pit stop, when Ilott and then Schumacher were able to perform the undercut and emerge in the net lead of the race.
Guanyu Zhou, UNI-Virtuosi (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
With more heat in his tyres, Zhou managed to repass Ilott and Schumacher on their out laps, while Ilott overhauled Schumacher to resume net second behind Zhou.
But on lap 26 Zhou slowed with a sudden loss of power and dropped down the order. Ilott resumed the lead ahead of Schumacher, with ART’s Marcus Armstrong, who had climbed through the field on the alternate strategy, assuming third place.
While Zhou returned to the pits there were problems too for HWA’s Artem Markelov, who came to a halt on the circuit and brought out the safety car for two laps.
Marcus Armstrong, ART (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
Ilott held the lead at the safety car restart, and was gifted a reprieve when Schumacher ran off the circuit and through the gravel trap, dropping down to P13.
With Schumacher out of contention as well, Ilott held several seconds in hand over second-placed Armstrong, with Robert Shwartzman promoted to third. This gap only increased as Armstrong and Shwartzman battled hard over the podium positions, allowing Ilott to go from 4.8s ahead on lap 36 to more than 8s by the chequered flag.
Despite having an apparent pace advantage, Shwartzman was unable to get past Armstrong and finished in third behind the ART. Armstrong’s teammate Christian Lundgaard finished fourth after seeing off a late challenge from Dan Ticktum, while Giuliano Alesi made the alternate strategy work to take sixth from 18th on the grid.
Louis Deletraz took seventh for Charouz and Drugovich held on to eighth place to take reverse grid pole for tomorrow on his F2 debut. Nobuharu Matsushita, another alternate strategy runner, finished in ninth and Roy Nissany took the final point in tenth.
Along with Markelov, Sean Gelael and Marino Sato also retired from the race, while Luca Ghiotto failed to start because of a technical problem. Schumacher eventually finished just outside the points in P11, while Zhou finished down in P17.
Robert Shwartzman, Prema (Carl Bingham, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
Oscar Piastri cruised to victory at the Red Bull Ring in the first Formula 3 feature race of 2020, leading teammate Logan Sargeant in a Prema 1–2.
Piastri started from third on the grid behind ART’s polesitter Sebastian Fernandez and Trident’s Lirim Zendelli, but made a rapid launch to challenge for the lead into Turn 1. By Turn 4 he was into first place, having clipped Fernandez into a spin at the first corner and passing Zendelli shortly after.
With no further action taken on his contact with Fernandez, Piastri was free to build an early lead over the chasing pack. After setting an early fastest lap, Piastri already had several seconds in hand over second-placed Zendelli by lap 5.
Lirim Zendelli, Trident (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
While Piastri ran away at the front, the rest of the top 10 ran in a tight train all within DRS range of each other. Zendelli held onto second for the first few laps, but on lap 6 he was passed at Turn 4 by both Sargeant and Alex Peroni, who had charged up from eighth on the grid.
Three laps later, Zendelli lost another place to Frederik Vesti and dropped to fifth. Behind them, Red Bull-backed Liam Lawson continued his rise from 12th on the grid by passing David Beckmann for sixth.
Further back, Aleksandr Smolyar and Clement Novalak occupied the final places in the top 10, having been gifted positions by Fernandez’s spin and Jake Hughes pulling into the pits after the formation lap.
Logan Sargeant, Prema (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
On lap 14 Sargeant set the fastest lap and began to capitalise on the tyre wear Piastri had incurred in his early charge. As the race neared its closing laps Sargeant reduced the gap to his teammate from 3.5s to 1.7s, with Piastri having visibly less grip than the chasing Prema.
However, with the laps ticking down Piastri had enough in hand to stay ahead of Sargeant until the chequered flag, and take the feature race win on his F3 debut. Sargeant came home in second for a Prema 1–2, while Peroni took his first podium in third. Peroni also set the final fastest lap of the race, taking an additional two points.
Vesti made it three Premas in the top four, and Zendelli finished fifth ahead of Lawson, Beckmann and Smolyar. Novalak took tenth place, earning the reverse grid pole position for tomorrow’s sprint race.
Alex Peroni, Campos (Carl Bingham, LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
FIA Formula 3 returns this weekend with a bumper double-header in Spielberg, Austria.
As the 2020 season gets underway all eyes will be on Prema, who dominated last year’s championship to win both the drivers’ and teams’ titles. With Robert Shwartzman, Jehan Daruvala and Marcus Armstrong graduating to Formula 2, Prema has an all-new lineup for this year led by Renault academy driver and 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup champion Oscar Piastri.
Piastri is joined by Frederik Vesti, who won the 2019 Formula Regional European title with Prema, and Logan Sargeant, who has plenty of F3 experience having raced with Carlin last year.
Frederik Vesti, Prema (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
Whether this new lineup will be able to recreate the eight wins and sixteen further podiums Prema swept to last year remains to be seen, and they won’t be without their competition.
Hitech were Prema’s closest rivals last year and has a trio of drivers for 2020 that combines talent and F3 experience. Max Fewtrell and Liam Lawson, Renault and Red Bull juniors respectively, both took podiums in their debut seasons last year, and are joined by Red Bull junior and reigning Italian F4 champion Dennis Hauger.
ART struggled last year to get to grips with the new F3 car and will be expected to improve after this learning experience. Their new lineup is headed by Sauber junior and reigning ADAC F4 champion Theo Pourchaire, who is joined by Alexsandr Smolyar and Sebastian Fernandez.
Theo Pourchaire, ART (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
Another headache for Prema this weekend may also come from Jake Hughes, the only returning race winner from 2019. Hughes is staying with HWA Racelab for a second season, and this consistency should help him to hit the ground running in the first feature race of the year.
But there are plenty more drivers to watch throughout F3’s packed 30-car grid. Among them are 2019 Macau Grand Prix winner Richard Verschoor (MP Motorsport), rising Red Bull proteges Jack Doohan (HWA) and Igor Fraga (Charouz), 2019 British F3 champion Clement Novalak (Carlin), and the highly-rated Sophia Floersch (Campos).
With so many exceptional drivers and a true old-school circuit, this weekend at the Red Bull Ring will prove an exciting start to the 2020 Formula 3 championship.
Sophia Floersch, Campos (Joe Portlock / LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship)
The 2020 Formula 2 season gets underway this weekend with the first of a double-header at Austria’s Red Bull Ring.
The F2 grid in Spielberg will be full of returning faces. Series stalwarts Artem Markelov, Sean Gelael, Jack Aitken, Louis Deletraz, Nobuharu Matsushita, Roy Nissany and Luca Ghiotto are all back, as are Guanyu Zhou, Callum Ilott, Giuliano Alesi, Mick Schumacher, Marino Sato and Nikita Mazepin, who made their debuts last year.
Alongside them are nine rookie drivers, six of whom come from Formula 1 junior programmes. These are: Renault’s Christian Lundgaard (ART), Williams’ Dan Ticktum (DAMS), Ferrari’s Marcus Armstrong (ART) and Robert Shwartzman (Prema), and Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda and Jehan Daruvala (both at Carlin).
The remaining three rookies are Guilherme Samaia (Campos), Pedro Piquet (Charouz) and Felipe Drugovich (MP Motorsport).
Jehan Daruvala and Yuki Tsunoda, Carlin (Carl Bingham, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
In such an unusual season, it’s hard to predict the pecking order coming into the first round of the championship.
Of the returning drivers, Aitken, Markelov, Ghiotto, Matsushita and Schumacher all have race-winning pedigree at this level. Aitken is perhaps best-placed to fight at the front as he remains with Campos this year, although none of the others (Markelov least of all) should be discounted from pulling off a surprise charge to the top step.
Looking at the top teams is usually a safe bet coming into a new season. UNI-Virtuosi had a strong showing in Austria last year with podiums in both races, and have a talented lineup in Zhou and Ilott who are both gunning for their first F2 victory.
Callum Ilott, UNI-Virtuosi (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
ART can always be relied on to run at the front. And although the French team has an all-rookie lineup, both Lundgaard and Armstrong were race-winners in Formula 3 last year and could both be credible threats to F2’s old guard.
And then there’s Prema. Schumacher is expected to make a big step forward after a sedate debut last year, so shouldn’t be ruled out of contention just because of his 2019 results. And of course he’s partnered by reigning F3 champion Shwartzman, who has plenty of speed and race craft to make an immediate impression on his F2 debut.
As ever, it’s going to be a fascinating opening round for F2 as we wait to see how the field shakes out for the season ahead.
Marcus Armstrong, ART (Joe Portlock, LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship)
We had some exciting news reported this afternoon! There has been an announcement with changes made to the calendar after the loss of many rounds through the summer period.
2020 FIA World Rally Championship Rallye Monte-Carlo 2020 22-26 January 2020 Thierry Neuville, Nicolas Gilsoul, Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Photographer: Helena El Mokni Worldwide copyright: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Making its championship debut at the start of September is Rally Estonia, long rumoured during this lockdown period to be joining the calendar. Taking place during the first weekend of September, this becomes the 33rd country to host a full world rally championship event. It will be a gravel round, and I can imagine that Ott Tänak and his co-driver Martin Järveoja will be very excited about competing on home soil!
2020 FIA World Rally Championship / Round 02 / Swedish Rally / February 13-16, 2020 // Worldwide Copyright: Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT
Following up is the scheduled Rally Turkey, over the weekend of the 24th to 27th of September, then Rally Germany, the all tarmac round from the 15th to the 18th of October. Following those two events is the rescheduled Rally Italia Sardegna which takes place over the final weekend of October, 29th October to the 1st of November, that would have seen Wales Rally GB take place. The season will conclude in Japan in November over the weekend of the 19th to 22nd.
FIA World Rally Championship 2019 / Round 03 / Rally Mexico / March 7th-10th, 2019 // Worldwide Copyright: Toyota Gazoo Racing WRC
Here’s the full updated calendar for you!
Monte-Carlo 23rd to 26th January
Rally Sweden 13th to 16th February
Rally Mexico 12th to 15th March (this finished early on the 14th of course)
Rally Estonia 4th to 6th September
Rally Turkey 24th to 27th September
Rally Germany 15th to 18th October
Rally Italia Sardegna 29th October to 1st November
Rally Japan 19th to 22nd November
There also may be the addition of Ypres Rally in Belgium which could take place over the weekend of the 2nd to the 4th of October and Croatia with a date yet to be confirmed as other options.
Here’s a reminder of the current championship standings.
2020 FIA World Rally Championship for Drivers’ Standings
After round 3
1
S. Ogier
62
2
E. Evans
54
3
T. Neuville
42
4
K. Rovanperä
40
5
O. Tänak
38
6
T. Suninen
26
7
E. Lappi
24
8
S.Loeb
8
9
T. Katsuta
8
2020 FIA World Rally Championship for Manufacturers’ Standings
After round 3
1
Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team
110
2
Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team
89
3
M-Sport Ford World Rally Team
65
Well, we are hopefully set for an exciting remainder of this season’s championship.
112 days after the opener in Melbourne was supposed to get underway, the Formula One season will finally begin in Austria this Sunday.
As with the return of most sport during the COVID-19 pandemic however, things will work a little differently in the F1 paddock. Media presence will be lower, the freedom of the drivers to roam around the surrounding area during race week will decrease and, perhaps most prominently, there will be a complete absence of fans.
The Austrian Grand Prix will mark the first of two races at the 4.3-kilometre Red Bull Ring, with the Styrian Grand Prix following just a week later. This is all part of the FIA’s plan to satiate the year with as many races as possible so as to create as exhaustive a calendar as possible for the world championship season, which needs to be at least eight races long to classify as such.
Normally by this point of the year, we would know who is competitive and who is not, but the cars have not run since testing in Barcelona at the beginning of the year and, as we learned last year especially, testing pace is little to go by.
It is therefore quite difficult to determine who the favourites are going to be, but the same could generally be said in Spielberg last year. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari were all competitive last season, with Max Verstappen narrowly beating Charles Leclerc to victory following a controversial overtake at the end of the race, the investigation for which was not concluded until hours after the drivers had stepped off the podium.
Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
One of the major points of interest is the perennially fascinating midfield battle. The Racing Point, designed on last year’s Mercedes, is tipped to be one of the major challengers to fourth place in the Constructors’ as they look to knock McLaren off their perch as best of the rest. Renault’s inconsistencies over the past couple of seasons will need to be rectified by their new driver-pairing of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, as the French team consider their future involvement in the sport they have failed to re-master since their return in 2016. Alpha Tauri – rebranded from Toro Rosso – and Alfa Romeo will also have an eye on challenging for the best of the midfield teams.
Haas are understood to be the only constructor not bringing upgrades to this race, as uncertainty looms about their interest in F1 too. Their upgrades last year affected them adversely rather than helping them progress after the first race, and they will look to avoid further regression this year. They managed a fourth and fifth-placed finish in Spielberg in 2018, while Kevin Magnussen qualified an impressive fifth last season. A gearbox penalty and the Haas car’s ghastly race pace saw him finish behind both the Williams cars.
Speaking of which, Williams’ car was three seconds quicker in testing in Spain than it was in the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix, which will lead the British team to believe they can climb off the bottom of the championship table and relieve some of the immense pressure currently on Claire Williams’ shoulders.
One of the shortest tracks on the calendar follows the longest wait for a Formula One season since the World Championship’s inception. The Styrian mountains will not be alive with the sound of fans, but they will still be alive with the sound of Formula One cars.
As a motorsport fan I’ve rarely felt the level of righteous indignation I experienced in September 2013, when Heart FM egregiously used this caption under a photo of Niki Lauda and a footballer. Admittedly, that footballer was David Beckham, but who hasn’t heard of Niki Lauda?
Never fear, however, for Maurice Hamilton is here to put that injustice to rights with his biography of the great Austrian, fittingly titled Niki Lauda.
The expression GOAT is bandied about a lot these days. That’s ‘Greatest of all Time’, for those of you who like to wave at trendy acronyms as they pass you by. Reading Hamilton’s book, which is based on testimonies by journalists, peers and friends, as well as the forthright opinions of the man himself, it’s clear that Lauda would have been among the first to say that GOAT is not really applicable to him. The term implies a natural ability that is seen rarely in the history of a sport; your Ronnie O’Sullivans, Mo Farrahs and Lance Armstrongs.
Okay, maybe not that last one.
What Lauda can easily be described as is a legend of F1, with three world titles as a driver and decades of involvement in the sport out of the cockpit.
Lauda disliked the misconception that he was a walking computer, thinking in binary terms and coldly assessing risk. This was rooted in his idiosyncratic and abrupt way of speaking, and his often harsh criticism and high expectations of others. He ignored the fluff and superstition of sport, and built a legacy from his own self-belief, business acumen and intelligence. He couldn’t drive around a car’s problems, but he could communicate effectively with his team to correct issues. Everything he did was for a purpose and was done with intricate attention to detail. And if there’s one thing that is apparent in the fond comments by those interviewed by Hamilton, it’s that Lauda possessed a great sense of humour and was deeply kind; aspects of his personality perhaps less widely accepted than his immense fortitude.
Niki Lauda focuses on Lauda’s adult life and career, glossing over his youth and family except in how they affected his early ambition to go racing. Instead, the book gives engaging insight into Lauda’s thought processes and how his work ethic and experiences set him apart from his contemporaries. He had ambition, but it went beyond driving. He had passion, but it was tempered by shrewd decision-making. He was outspoken, but he never exempted himself from his blunt criticism.
Niki Lauda is not just a book for fans; it’s the story of a fascinating life, written with love.
To get the full Lauda experience, the impressive tome Niki Lauda: His Competition History by Jon Saltinstall was published in 2019. Read in conjunction with Hamilton’s biography, it beautifully illustrates Lauda’s racing career. This book doesn’t belong on a coffee table; it is a stunning testament to a career that spanned the decades when single seater motorsport was precariously balanced between appalling danger and creative innovation.
Formula 1 is an inherently photogenic sport, and the sheer beauty of the vintage images in this book are breathtaking. For true fans of both Lauda and the history of motorsport, it’s well worth the £60 asking price.
Niki Lauda: His Competition History is published by Evro.
2020 was meant to be the second year of the all-women’s single seater championship, the W Series. It was going to give out superlicence points with 15 going the way of the champion, and it was due to have eight rounds with the last two supporting the F1 Grand Prix in the US and Mexico. However due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has compromised a lot of motorsport series this year, the W Series was one of those hit the hardest and subsequently has delayed its second season until 2021.
This has of course thrown a spanner in the works of many of the 18 women who were due to compete, one of whom was the inaugural champion Jamie Chadwick. The 22-year old from Somerset had an incredible 2019, with some notable achievements including becoming an Aston Martin factory GT driver, a Williams F1 development driver, being a finalist in the Aston Martin BRDC Autosport award, winning her class at the Nürburgring 24 hours and along with winning the W Series, she also won the MRF Challenge winter series. Chadwick also finished fourth with a race victory in the most recent Asian F3 championship, won a race in British F3 and won the GT4 class championship in British GT back in 2015.
So with nothing in place for a 2020 campaign, Chadwick was invited to participate in a test day for the Formula Regional European Championship with the highly successful Prema PowerTeam in place of Roman Staněk. The Czech driver raced last year in a dual ADAC F4 and Italian F4 campaign with US Racing, taking two wins and fourth in the German championship and one win on his way to fifth in the Italian championship.
Staněk was due to race with Prema in Formula Regional but has had to pull the plug due to potential budgetary issues. Chadwick will take his place in the team having recently earned the backing of a company called Rodin Cars, who develop trackday single seater experiences with their FZED model, based primarily on the Lotus Exos T125.
The Formula Regional European Championship utilises the same Alfa Romeo-powered Tatuus F3 T-318 that Chadwick used in both the W Series and in Asian F3, and she has got a golden opportunity to shine as she is in the best team. Last year was the inaugural season of Formula Regional, Prema dominated with their three drivers occupying first, second and fifth in the championship, with 2019 champion Frederik Vesti now set to race in the Grand Prix supporting FIA Formula 3 championship again with the dominant Prema outfit.
Chadwick will undoubtedly face stiff competition in the form of teammates Arthur Leclerc and Gianluca Petecof, both of whom are part of the Ferrari Driver Academy and finished rather strongly in their F4 campaigns last year. The season will consist of eight rounds, the first of which takes place on the weekend of August 2nd at the Misano circuit in Italy, the season will end at Vallelunga on the weekend of December 6th, and along the way, they’ll also visit Paul Ricard, Red Bull Ring, Mugello, Monza, Catalunya and Imola.
This could be a make or break year for Chadwick, it’s very possible she could do very well or be shown up by her younger teammates. Either way, this is a great chance for Jamie to show that she could be a great prospect for F1 in the future.
image courtesy of W series