It’s the trickiest feat in the world – coming off the back of the grid start, chopping through the midfield hopefuls and emerging in the top ten with the car intact but in need of rubber.
Imagine what the rest of the field thought as New Zealander Marcus Armstrong did just that in a sensational drive to break into the top ten in the second race of the Hungaroring FIA Formula 2 weekend, narrowly missing out on points but staying in touch with the championship leaders.
Rain and red flags spoiled qualifying for the Kiwi driver and many of his rivals going into the weekend, while a tangle with another competitor who’s been around GP2/F2 for a while now took him out of the feature race on Saturday.
The wet start to the weekend had prevented teams from arriving at an ideal setup to mitigate tyre wear level and maximise grip. For a moment it seemed the F3 madness had settled over F2. Cars driving up the rear of other cars (Christian Lundgaard, really?), cars spangling into Armco, drivers effing and blinding on their pit radio (Mr Ticktum, the only award you get for that performance is a big block of soap to wash out that mouth of yours).
But anyway.
Armstrong’s non-finish sent the Kiwi to the rear of the pack for the start of Sunday’s race and set the scene for his comeback charge – a performance unmatched by any other driver in the field. Fortunately, Saturday’s fever had all but subsided, so nobody stuck their wheels out as Marcus came past.
Starting from 19th place on the grid, Armstrong sped through to overtake eight cars in as many laps, all the while managing the tyre degradation issues that put many of the drivers into the pits to change off their allocated medium compound tyres. He continued to challenge and clawed his way through to eighth as his tyres began to degrade.
With a late race stop for tyres Armstrong was able to return to the circuit without dropping a place.
In the closing stages he was locked in a duel with Renault F1 Junior Guanyu Zhou who grabbed eighth and the final point after passing Giuliano Alesi (who went the whole race on medium tyres) and Armstrong in the final two laps.
The teams now take a break until the end of July when they re-convene at Silverstone in the UK for the fourth round. Though other teams (Uni Virtuosi, Hi-tech, DAMs) might disagree, this weekend highlighted the threat of the Prema double-A driver pairing at a time when defending champions ART Grand Prix might have assumed they had things well under control.
Schumacher and Shwartzman are formidable opponents in all conditions, and when backed by Prema’s trackside machine they are capable of getting away with the front end of the title fight as Marcus and the Prema squad did last year in FIA Formula 3.
But a couple of weeks off to work on setup and form will do the ART crews a world of good. Time enough for defending champions ART Grand Prix to analyse Prema’s form and work out how to fight back. Marcus is very good in the rain, so Silverstone (which may well be the Olde English word for ‘lots of water’) holds little of concern for him. More work on car speed seems to be called for if ART want to hold the line against Prema and the rest of the mob.
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