Robert’s strong Baku weekend ends with him going from tenth to third in the Feature Race. Unlucky Armstrong had to retire.
Robert Shwartzman stood on the podium for the second time in two days, finishing third in the Feature Race. After winning the first Sprint Race, the Russian Ferrari Driver Academy student rounded off a great weekend with a charge up the order, making up seven places to finish third. He thus leaves Baku with an excellent points haul of 36, bettered only by Juri Vips with 41, that takes him to third in the standings on 66 points, 12 behind the leader, China’s Guan Yu Zhou.
Intelligent race. “I am very, very happy,” said Robert. “It was a fun race and I managed to pull off some great overtaking moves. When I took third place I decided to save the tyres to maybe be able to do something if the Safety Car came out. It didn’t happen, but it’s still very good, given where we were in the standings before this weekend and we can say we’ve made a big step forward, which makes me optimistic for the upcoming races.”
Opening laps. Robert made up two places at the start, to run eighth behind the Safety Car, which was on track for two laps. At the restart he pushed really hard and managed to pass Felipe Drugovic, Zhou and Jehan Daruvala to be fifth. After the pit stop, changing from the Soft to Hard tyres at the end of lap 8, Robert rejoined sixth.
Climb. A very nice passing move on Boschung in the twisty part of the track saw Robert go fifth, but two of the drivers ahead of him had yet to make the mandatory pit stop, so he was effectively third at this point. From then on, there were no significant changes to the order and Robert took the chequered flag in third place, six seconds behind team-mate Oscar Piastri.
Unlucky. Marcus Armstrong also got a great start, lying fourth going into turn 2 on the opening lap. However, going into the next corner he was hit by Theo Pourchaire, who in turn was scrapping with Dan Ticktum and the driver from New Zealand ended up in the barriers. It was very disappointing for Marcus, who through no fault of his own, failed to score on a weekend when he clearly had the potential to do well.
Silverstone next. There is now a one month break in the Formula 2 calendar before the fourth round, which takes place at Silverstone circuit from 16 to 18 July.