Sebastian Montoya handed PREMA Racing its first points finish of the year as the opening round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship signed off in Melbourne. The tricky semi-permanent venue was home to a traditionally spectacular race, and the Colombian-American made the right moves from the start, moving up into the top 10 within the first few laps.
Despite struggling with the Option tyres in the early running, he benefited from the first safety-car and a quick pit stop, which brought him into contention for a top-5 finish. Unfortunately, a 5-second pit lane speeding penalty dropped him from seventh to ninth place after the flag — still enough to secure a points finish.
Coming off a tough start to the weekend, Mari Boya didn't have perfect chemistry with his car, but he maximised the available potential and recovered to P13 with a clean, measured race.
#11 – SEBASTIAN MONTOYA
"The first feature race of the year has been an interesting one. I would have liked a little less commotion, but we were quick and it was fun. The first lap was especially fun — I made some good moves and passed several cars. After that the tyres started to drop, but we had the safety car so it was okay. We did the pit stop and it was my mistake pressing the pit speed limiter button at the pit entry. The team did a very good job in the pit stop and helped me pass some cars. We need to look at what happened after the early moves because we were struggling a lot with the rears. There are some weak points we can focus on after this race to understand what we need to improve. I'm really happy with the pace, and after the difficult qualifying, to leave Australia with two top-ten finishes is great. Thank you so much to the team for the work done since Barcelona — we keep improving."
#12 – MARI BOYA
"It has been a really difficult weekend. I always felt the pace was very strong — even in qualifying and in the Sprint Race, where I had crashes, I was always feeling good with the car, and that kept me motivated. Today, on Sunday, I experienced a feeling with the car that I had never had before, and because of that, the pace was not good. We need to understand what happened. Still, we were able to recover, and had we had the pace of the previous days, we surely would have finished much further up the order. We have to learn from this and move on — the season is long and we will aim for clean weekends ahead."