PREMA Racing experienced a difficult race today at Hungaroring in race 1 of the FIA Formula 2 Championship at the Magyar venue.
Having a tough start from P3, Dennis Hauger found himself in a challenging three-wide situation which eventually turned for the worse on lap 1. The Norwegian was forced to retire due to contact damage and will have to do it all again from P8 on the feature race.
Jehan Daruvala had a positive start but soon began to struggle with tyre wear. Having jumped to P6 from P12 in the opening stages, he was passed by some of his contenders. After making contact with one of them, the Indian got a 10-second penalty, which he served during a late pit stop.
#1 - Dennis Hauger
"A bad start in general, as I got some wheel-spin. I have to try and make it better to get a good start tomorrow. From then on, we went three wide but then Drugovich on the inside went a bit too deep and caught both me and Logan out. It was unfortunate, but mainly coming from the bad start. We will see what Jehan struggled with and try to go again tomorrow. It's going to be a long race, so there are definitely going to be some opportunities."
#2 - Jehan Daruvala
"The race was not easy at all. I did a good start, got a bit lucky with the incidents and got into the top-6, then same story from Red Bull Ring, we were struggling with the fronts. After four laps, I completely lost front grip. Lack of pace after that, we were pretty much the slowest car on track. We need to look into what is going wrong and see what we can do better tomorrow."