Electronic problems have led Brazilian driver to drop two positions in the championship
This Sunday (13) the third round of the F2 World Championship came to an end. Racing for the Carlin team, the Brazilian driver Sérgio Sette Câmara (YOUSE | BMV | CBC | CEMIG | GASMIG | Usiminas) had a good start in free practice,but was betrayed by electronic problems that affected him in the qualifiers and in the second race of the weekend.
Coming from a team error in the second round of Azerbaijan, which cost him the vice-leadership of the Championship, Sérgio arrived at the Barcelona track ready to go up in the standings. For this, with all the support and tradition of the English team the driver soon showed what he came for and, in the only free practice session, was the second fastest with about a tenth of a second of difference against the first.
Excited with the situation that was coming, the driver was still enthused for the qualifying session, which was held on Friday. Sérgio was ready to go on the track, but the moment his engine was turned on, the car’s electronic throttle system did not identify the accelerator. So the car could only move slowly. The team took the first 25 minutes of the session to fix this problem and, with just five minutes left, Sergio went to the track and, with only one valid lap, with the tyres far from the ideal temperature, he got the 14th time . In spite of that, only three tenths of the mark set by his teammate, who did not have any kind of problem.
With his head held high, Sette Camera lined up his car in the seventh row of the grid of the fifth stage of the Championship. As always, after an excellent start, the driver won four positions on the first lap and, excitedly, continued the race. In an extremely troubled race, with several accidents, every time Sérgio started to make a move, he was prevented by the activation of the virtual safety car. Altogether there were four of them. With a fast car in his hands, the driver managed to get to sixth place when he was called to his pit stop. The mechanic on the right front wheel ended up fumbling a bit, generating a delay of about two seconds in relation to his teammate’s pit stop. Sergio carried on with his race and, at the end of the race, received the flag in the seventh position.
On Sunday, Sette Câmara had the right to start from the second position according to the reverse grid for the top 8 finishers of race one. After a rainy night the track was quite humid and, positioned on the outside of the ideal path, Sergio made a conservative start, fell to the fourth place, but was already back to the second position before turn 3. With three laps completed the virtual safety car was activated. In the moment of the re-acceleration Sérgio, pressed by three competitors, ended up losing adhesion in the braking zone of turn six and was overtaken, falling to the fifth place. With a car that did not have the same rhythm of the opponents in front of him, Sergio was in the race with the clear objective of scoring important points for the Championship. Unfortunately, with 12 of 26 laps completed, Sergio saw his car simply stall in the middle of the track and forced him to abandon the race.
Thus, without scoring points in this event, Sergio added only six points in this round of the Championship and fell to the fifth place in the standings with 46 points. Lando Noris leads with 80 against, 67 of Alexander Albon, 62 of Geroge Russel and the same 46 points for Nicky Devries.
“This weekend was a real disaster. Exactly the opposite of what I was expecting. We had a fast car, I did the second time in practice, but then everything was not what we expected. Both in the qualifiers and in today’s race, failures in the electronic central of the car have taken the chance to recover in the standings. The team apologized to me, recognised that many problems happened and, above all, will do their utmost best to reverse the situation. For my part, I have to accept the team’s apologies and raise my head in search of recovery. We will continue together throughout the Championship and, above all, I believe in the potential and capacity of recovery for both myself and the team. Let’s go forward, “concluded the driver positively.
The Formula 2 World Championship events return in two weekends in Monte Carlo with the traditional Monaco Grand Prix races between May 24 and 26. The races will be valid for the seventh and eighth stages of the Championship.