Piastri storms to second straight Feature Race win at Sochi

PREMA Racing and Oscar Piastri cruised to their second consecutive feature race win in spectacular fashion today as the FIA Formula 2 Championship weekend drew to a conclusion at Sochi. 

The Australian had a great start from pole and soon opened a gap to prevent any DRS move. After changing his supersoft tyres for a set of softs, he then made quick work of traffic to always keep his main contender at bay. 

With today’s win, his third of the year, the Alpine Academy Aussie got a healthy bump in terms of the championship, as he now leads with a reassuring 36-point advantage.

Robert Shwartzman also made great gains for the championship with P4. The Russian had a clean start and moved up from P7 on the grid. A slow pit-stop exit to avoid an oncoming car and an unsafe release penalty put him a bit on a back foot for the final run. However, Shwartzman bounced back to take P4. 

Heading into the final stint of the championship in, all in the Middle East, PREMA Racing also solidified its lead in the team competition.

“We finished the weekend in Sochi with P3 and P4. Generally not a bad weekend, but not good enough. My target is to fight for the championship, and again we didn’t manage to score the points we need to close the gap to Oscar. I’m a bit disappointed with that, and I think that the main issue was qualifying which compromised everything. Today the start was good. I gained two positions, and I didn’t want to risk too much with so many cars side by side. Then I was P5, in the queue, and with the option tyres the car was quite challenging. At the pit-stop there was traffic and the team could not release me so we lost a few seconds there which could have helped us to fight for the podium. In the second part of the race, the pace was growing step by step. We got Boschung, using a mistake of his to pass. In the end, I was behind Daruvala, but I didn’t have enough pace to attack him. We scored decent points and the championship is still on, but we need to improve in Saudi Arabia.”

Qualifying: P7

Starting Grid Race 1: P4

Starting Grid Race 3: P7

Fastest Lap: 1:48.098

Race 1: P3

Race 3: P4

“I’m very happy with our second feature race win. It was a tough race, I had Pourchaire behind me for the whole time and really had to push the whole way to keep him there. It was fun even with a lot of pressure, but I’m very happy to have converted the pole to another win and increased the championship lead which is even better.”

Qualifing: P1

Starting Grid Race 1: P10

Starting Grid Race 3: P1

Fastest Lap: 1:47.465

Race 1: P9

Race 3: P1

Source | Photo: PREMA Racing