Preview – F2 Round 9 – Budapest 

The F2 season is really motoring now as we prepare for Round 9 of 14, held at the Hungaroring near Budapest from 19-21 July.

Despite a challenging last round, our home event at Silverstone, the team will be throwing everything we have at staging a comeback. With six rounds remaining, things are hotting up and there’s still everything to play for in the Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships.

Speaking of heat, the teams are unlikely to face the same changeable weather posed by the British Grand Prix. Budapest is unceasingly scorching in July and the forecast is for highs of 33°C during the weekend. That translates to very high track and cockpit temperatures and given the nature of the circuit – requiring full focus throughout the lap – the Hungaroring presents an altogether different challenge.

Often dubbed “Monaco without walls”, the 4.381-kilometre loop set in a natural basin is a series of incessant bends and a single straight line, that of the pits, which makes overtaking really tricky. There are 14 corners, six left and eight to the right, some of them being 180° turns. Despite being relatively slow and narrow, there’s no let-up, so it demands everything you have as a driver.

The track tends to be dusty due to the summer heat and otherwise infrequent usage, so the emphasis is on good corner entry and traction, setting the car up to afford maximum grip for the track conditions. There is likely to be a significant shift between the afternoon Sprint Race on Saturday and the early morning Feature Race on Sunday, particularly if it’s windy, which serves to blow dust back onto the track overnight.

Paul Aron heads to Budapest having dropped to second in the drivers’ standings, and is now 16 points behind his main rival, Hitech alumnus Isack Hadjar. He’ll be looking to return to the same level of consistency he displayed in the first seven rounds, with every Qualifying and Race result now crucial to his title hopes. The same is true of the team, which fell to fourth in the standings last time out and has 29 points to recover to the lead outfit.

That ambition will surely get a boost from the ever-improving form of Amaury Cordeel. Solid points hauls of the Barcelona and Spielberg Feature Race variety from the Belgian will also play a critical role over the coming rounds.

Friday 19 July

11:05 Free Practice

16:00 Qualifying session

Saturday 20 July

14:15 Sprint Race (28 Laps)

Sunday 21 July

10:05 Feature Race (37 Laps)

Grid set by reversing Top 12 of Qualifying Results

All times local