The Brazilian driver would start second in Red Bull Ring, but a calculation error disqualified the driver in the qualifying sessions
The Red Bull Ring race track in Spielberg, Austria, held the fifth round of the F2 World Championship this weekend. The main F1 feeder category had 20 cars in the grid and the Brazilian driver, Sérgio Sette Câmara (ACER | CCR | SANEPAV | TAESA | CEMIG | BELL), after having registered the second best time in the qualifying sessions, had the opportunity to make his best weekend of the year stripped away from him.
As usual, F2 activities started on Friday with one free practice session. As Sergio was already familiar with the track, he and the MP Motorsport team opted to do some tests in the configuration of the car and the engineers could detect a serious problem in the motor of the car # 14. Without having the possibility to change cars during the session, the Brazilian finished his training in the 15th position.
In the face of this problem, the Dutch team worked quickly and changed the entire driving unit in just two hours. The qualifying sessions were performed on Friday late afternoon. With the faster car on the grid and a very stable set Sérgio was confident of his classification and, with the time of 1m13s736, he got the second place, behind Charles Leclerc, the current leader of the Championship. At the end of this session, however, the Brazilian’s car came to the pits with less than a liter of fuel in the tank. By determination of the regulation, he ended up being disqualified for not having enough gas for analysis.
Outraged by the situation, which led him to lose his best starting position of the season, the Brazilian driver had an intense meeting with the team. MP Motorsport apologized, took the blame, and explained that what might have happened was a possible higher consumption of the new engine.
Resigned, Sette Câmara lined up his car at the end of the grid for the first start, knowing that he had two recovery races ahead, the young man from Belo Horizonte remained very concentrated. In the first race, he made a good start and managed, in just three laps, to gain six positions. After that, however, his car did not keep up with the rhythm of the competitors ahead of him, and the driver ended up far from the squad. He made his pit stop eight laps to the end, returned to the track and received the flag in 16th place.
This Sunday, starting from the eighth row, again Sergio got an excellent start. He gained two positions on the first lap and, after the Safety Car came in, which realigned the squad after an accident, he kept on with his recovery race. Even though he did not have the same performance as the best drivers in this race, he managed to gain more positions and, at the end of the 28 laps, he came in 10th place, very close to the ninth place.
“It’s very frustrating for you to devote a lot to one thing, and when it’s all going well, a silly rule throws all the work down the drain. The car was very close to perfection in the qualifier. I did my best and we were going to start in the front row. The team was wrong in calculating the fuel and we can not hide this fact. We talked internally and worked together to have recovery conditions in the races. Unfortunately, with the consumption of the tires, the car ended up getting very back in the first race. In today’s race, I went as far as possible. My car lost a lot of aerodynamic pressure in the vacuum and with that, in the second half of the race was almost impossible to overtake the others, “commented the 19-year-old.
The F2 World Championship is heading straight for England. Next weekend, on the traditional Silverstone track, drivers and teams face the challenges of the sixth round of the competition with the races valid for the 11th and 12th stages of the year.