Pepe Martí controlled his way to victory at the Hungarian GP Sprint Race, with the Red Bull junior confident of victory throughout.
Martí, having qualified P10, led the field from P1 in the Sprint Race. Despite challenges from teammate Arvin Lindblad and Alex Dunne, the Spanish driver remained firm for a “chill” victory. Martí’s victory boosts hopes for a late title charge in the Drivers’ Championship.
Speaking to the media, Martí touched on his title hopes, and discussed his third race victory of the season.
Martí remained in control throughout the Sprint Race
Martí held his lead through the early stages amidst challenges from Lindblad, and survived a late scare from Dunne. Apart from that, the Spaniard enjoyed a relatively relaxed afternoon. All-in-all, the Campos driver feels that there was rarely a doubt over his victory.
“I mean I only really had two moments where I was doubting that I was going to win, first was when Arvid launched into T1 and then when I decided to go skating into T5 in the last lap. Other than that, the race was pretty chill, I was pretty much in control the whole way, I knew what pace to run and more or less what I should do to defend from the guys behind, just had two small moments.”
On the battle with Lindblad
The battle between the Campos pair caused concern for the team, with Martí describing it as idiotic over team radio due to the Hungaroring’s tyre demands. However, Martí revealed that he was not too concerned about it damaging his race.
“I don’t know which ones were heard, but I was just looking in my mirror and I saw Alex was like 1.5 behind us and Arvid was literally on my gear box most of the race, and we know it is a deg race, so I wasn’t really worried in that sense.
“I knew if Arvid was wanting to push a lot in the beginning, and then I knew it was going to be okay for me in the end. But then when he made a move he was trying to move into turn one, and I recovered it well in T2, I think it was fair racing and part of the race.”
Martí hoping to bring himself into a title fight
The F2 season is drawing to a close, with only a handful of opportunities remaining for drivers to score valuable points. Championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli sits on 129 points, but a Sprint Race victory sees Martí move to 96 points and give himself an outside chance.
Speaking on putting himself into a Drivers’ Championship battle, Martí stated: “I would hope so, obviously is quite late into the year which doesn’t help,” and admitted that Feature Race victories would go a long way to help: “I would much rather win two Sunday races than three, four, five Sprint wins.”
Continuing to focus on what can be improved, Martí added: “We have some stuff to work on, other teams have gone forward quite a lot at the beginning of the season, and now I think we find ourselves where everybody is quite matched so it’s quite hard to do everything well.”
