Louis’ F2 determination goes unrewarded at Silverstone
FIA Formula 2 Championship rookie Louis Delétraz endured a tough pair of races at Silverstone in the UK this weekend as a faulty DRS flap delayed his progress on track.
The Swiss driver rates the fast and flowing 5.89km circuit as one of his all-time favourites, but extracting the maximum performance from his Racing Engineering car proved to be a challenge as the DRS flap – a rear wing drag reduction device that is activated between certain track markers and dramatically improves straight line speed – caused intermittent problems.
Thursday’s practice session was encouraging and yielded a lap time was that good enough for P10 in the standings. But Louis’ hopes of building on that promise during Friday’s qualifying were dented when the lack of DRS was realised. It meant Louis couldn’t qualify any higher than P14 for Saturday’s Feature Race.
“From free practice onwards, the DRS didn’t always work well,” Louis explained. “In the first zone it was okay but in the second zone the beacon wasn’t detecting my car and the system didn’t send an activation signal to my car until it was too late.
“The team did the maximum they could to fix the problem and the people from the system tried to change different parts on my car as well. But it was a big loss. When you’re down the order, it’s very hard to defend and attack without DRS.”
The ADS Securities-supported driver’s pace continued to be affected by the DRS issue and an increase in understeer during Saturday afternoon’s 28-lap Feature Race further hampered Louis’ chances of rising up the leaderboard. Despite his best efforts, he completed the race in P12, just outside the point-scoring positions.
Louis and his engineers successfully implemented some set-up changes for today’s shorter Sprint Race that improved the front-end grip of his #3 car, but he then had to battle gear selection problems.
“I was a bit aggressive on the clutch at the start and dropped a few places with too much wheel spin, but then the upshift and downshift was pretty slow because the front wheel sensor was sending the wrong information to the gearbox,” Louis said. “That wasn’t good for my top speed – especially with no DRS as well.” Louis finished the race in P14.
Despite the sixth round of the 2017 F2 season presenting some unexpected hurdles, Louis is determined to remain upbeat and build on the positives as the second half of the championship gets underway in Hungary on 28-30 July.
The 20-year-old said: “We had some problems this weekend but I think the way we developed the set-up of the car to get over them was a good experience. The DRS guys should fit some new parts to my car in Budapest so hopefully that problem will go away.
“Hungary is a track where I’ve had many successes in the past and I’m looking forward to getting my season fully started over there. We all remain completely motivated. The results we want will come.”
