In a rough race with three Safety Car interventions. Iwasa starts in 13th, has an accident and finishes 14th
Baku City CircuitThe Feature Race of the FIA Formula 2 Round 6 Azerbaijan took place on Sunday, 12 June. As per the qualifying order, Ayumu Iwasa started from P13 in row 7 of the grid.
Under sunny skies with an ambient temperature of 25°C and a track temperature of 42°C, the formation lap got underway at 11：10am. Iwasa passed the first corner in 13th. Then, a multiple crash in the trailing pack at Turn 4 brought on the Safety Car on the first lap.
As the race resumed on Lap 5, Iwasa moved up to 12th. Having started on super soft tyres, Iwasa returned to the pit on Lap 8 to change to mediums. With the same strategy, for the next four laps, many cars pitted, one after another. On Lap 11, when they had finished their pit stops, Iwasa was running in 14th.
On Lap 12, there was an accident involving two cars at the back of the field and the Safety Car was brought out again. The race resumed on Lap 15, but the leaders struggled to accelerate at the start, which caused confusion in the rest of the field. Even at the front, their timing for acceleration was not in sync, and several cars made contact. In this situation, a car cut across in front of Iwasa in its attempt to avoid contact. The HFDP driver, who was accelerating, was unable to avoid contact and clipped it. Other incidents occurred and the VSC (Virtual Safety Car) was brought out. Meanwhile, Iwasa was forced to return to the pit to replace a front wing which had sustained damage. The VSC was taken off on Lap 17, and Iwasa returned to the race in 15th. From then on, he couldn’t improve his pace or recover any positions. On Lap 23, the leading car crashed out, and the Safety Car was called back for the third time. Iwasa moved up to 14th, but as the race reached the one-hour time limit, the chequered flag was waved after 26 laps with the Safety Car still leading.
It was the worst race. The restart [when I had an accident] was hardly a race. A car that avoided another that had braked suddenly appeared in front of me. I was on full throttle, so there was nothing I could do. So, I had to return to the pit with damage to my front wing. But even without that, my pace in the race wasn’t good and we don't know why yet. I hadn't made any major changes to the car or my driving since the qualifying, so we’ll now check why my pace was slow.I haven’t been able to take advantage of the speed of the car to get good results in the past few races, so my key challenge is to stem the bad tide. I will discuss things with the team and prepare well for the series of races in Europe.
