F2 review: how Russell took the crown
The Mercedes protege overcame early setbacks to take the Formula 2 crown on his way to grand prix racing with Williams
Anew car in a single-make formula usually instigates a welcome mixing-up of the order, but no-one could have expected just how exciting, frustrating, brilliant and annoying the Formula 2 season would be.
As it turned out, the final result wasn’t even close as ART Grand Prix’s George Russell took a second consecutive title – his first in 2017 as a rookie in the GP3 Series, and his second in ’18 as a rookie in F2. Seven wins matched the record for a season, previously shared by Charles Leclerc and Stoffel Vandoorne, and winning the crown as a rookie matches Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg. Not a bad club to be in.
But the season could have so easily gone the other way for Russell, a mainstay of Mercedes’ Formula 1 junior programme.
His year had a nightmare start. A slow getaway with F2’s tricky clutch (see page 44) ruined a second-place start in the opener in Bahrain, then he was taken out while leading in Baku by Nyck de
“MERCEDES DIDN’T JUST LOOK AT THE POINTS WE HAD LOST. THAT WAS REFRESHING”
Vries the next time out. Russell won the feature race at Barcelona, following up his sprint-race success in Baku, but then in Monaco his engine expired in practice at a track he’d never been to before, compromising the rest of his weekend. Paul Ricard followed with a feature win and then a clutch issue in the sprint.
All of this came while he was fighting with the media’s golden boy Lando Norris, who didn’t suffer a problem until Paul Ricard and was on a brilliantly consistent run. It seemed as if every time Russell caught a break, he was instantly yanked backwards by his Dallara F2 2018. But he remained convinced that his ability would see him through and impress the right people.
“Whenever I had my talks with Mercedes and Toto [Wolff, Mercedes F1 boss], they understood what was going on and understood the true potential,” he says of his early struggles.
“They didn’t just look at the overall standings and the points we’d lost. That was refreshing in my mind.”
It was at this point of the season that perennial Carlin racer Norris described his campaign as the “worst in my career”, despite leading the championship! Qualifying was one area where he particularly struggled, beaten in this discipline over the course of the season by team-mate Sergio Sette Camara, who had worse luck than most in his sophomore year. Norris scored just one win.
It’s not easy in F2 – there’s one 40-minute practice on the harder-compound tyre, then you’re straight out into qualifying on a softer set, having not run at the track on those tyres in those conditions. All that, and drivers have no data on the temperature of their tyres as the series doesn’t permit it.
Ultimately, Russell’s mid-season run won the title. He took back-to-back feature-race wins at Paul Ricard and the Red Bull Ring, and scored two seconds at Silverstone. Consistency as the season wore on helped, while Norris had the tricky balance of auditioning for an F1 seat, doing double-duty at Monza and Spa.
The man who didn’t register on most people’s radar pre-season for the F2 title chase was Alex Albon. The British-born Thai driver had a disastrous 2017 season with ART Grand Prix, in which he finished 10th, off the back of a brilliant ’16 GP3 campaign, when he was second behind team-mate Leclerc.
On that basis it was no wonder that he didn’t rank highly in terms of challengers with so much quality in the field. At the start of the season he was the only driver on a race-by-race deal – with DAMS – because of a lack of cash. But at the end he was third in the standings.
“I’m happy with this year – it’s all down to DAMS,” he explains. “I remember January/february, on the phone to
Francois [Sicard, F2 team boss] literally begging to have the seat for this year and I didn’t have the money for it, and he put me in it anyway. From then on it was always about proving a point and staying in the championship.”
And prove a point he did. In the three events during which Albon was fighting for the seat at the start of the year – and therefore under the utmost pressure – he took a fourth in Bahrain, won from pole in Baku and scored fifth from pole at Barcelona. A third pole in a row came in Monaco, but the race probably still haunts him.
He had the race apparently wrapped up, before he went to pit under the safety car. He took a wide line into the pits, which made de Vries think Albon was staying out. De Vries pulled a tight line and clipped the DAMS driver into a spin, ruining both their races.
As it turned out, Albon sneaked into the Abu Dhabi finale as the only driver who could topple Russell, after Norris suffered pitstop pandemonium in the penultimate outing at Sochi, when he was released from the box before a wheel was attached.
“I REMEMBER LITERALLY BEGGING FOR A SEAT THIS YEAR. I DIDN’T HAVE THE MONEY”
Lacking heat in his tyres, Albon had to watch the 37-point deficit to Russell extend when his rival took Yas Marina pole, and Albon qualified eighth. He then stalled in the feature race as Russell won and sealed a brilliant title. Albon’s poor fortune allowed Norris to jump back into second, albeit 68 points behind the title victor.
Artem Markelov (three), de Vries (three) and Antonio Fuoco
(two) all outscored Norris for wins, but Markelov and de Vries both disappointed with multiple sub-par performances in what should have been title campaigns for both. De Vries was with the superb Prema Racing team, but often failed to deliver on that car’s advantage in qualifying and races, while anything other than a proper title challenge was unacceptable for Markelov, in his fifth season in the category. His Monaco feature-race win came in part thanks to the leaders taking each other out, and the other two successes were reversed-grid wins. De Vries at least took two feature-race victories on merit in Hungary and Belgium, and spent the year without a frontrunning team-mate in Sean Gelael.
By contrast, Markelov’s Russian Time team-mate produced what has to be one of the moments of the season. Honda junior Tadasuke Makino had only one season of competition in Europe under his belt in four years of racing cars, but there’s always been something special about the Osaka driver. At Monza, Russian Time made the call to start him on the soft tyre, and it proved to be the stronger option as the supersofts degraded.
The 21-year old drove through the field before most had pitted in the early running and held on to take a dramatic win. He’s known
“THE HALO LIKELY SAVED A DRIVER’S LIFE, PROVING HOW IMPORTANT THE DEVICE IS”
in the paddock for his love of high fashion, but there was nothing dowdy about his rapid drive under pressure in unfamiliar circumstances at the head of the field.
At the previous round, Makino had asked Russian Time why he didn’t have a bike on which to do the ‘track walk’, like stablemate Markelov. The team joked that when he won, he would receive said bike. One week later, mission accomplished.
Makino also played a role in one of the most significant moments of the F2 season at Barcelona in May, when during a crash Nirei Fukuzumi’s left-rear wheel hit Makino’s halo. One year earlier, the wheel more than likely would have hit Makino’s helmet.
Many negative words have been written about this year’s F2 car – and rightly so – but the introduction of the halo likely saved a driver’s life and provided the first example in world motorsport of how important the device is.
That was the ‘incident that could have been worrying’ of the year; now for the ‘curious and bizarre’ one, when Santino Ferrucci crashed into Trident team-mate Arjun Maini on the slow-down lap after the Silverstone sprint race.
Ferrucci had also driven between the F2 and F1 paddock ahead of the race without a glove and holding a mobile phone, which led to the American being banned for two rounds. Tempers had flared at various points in the Ferrucci camp during 2018, and this was the final straw for Italian squad Trident, which said it needed to “protect” Maini, and removed Ferrucci – who apologised for the “mental lapse” almost immediately.
The helped trigger a mid-season driver merry-go-round in the Trident, MP Motorsport and Campos squads – all three struggling to deliver a car to match the F2 frontrunners. There is cause for optimism for Campos after Roberto Merhi delivered a podium following his late-season switch to the squad.
But the year will be remembered most for three of the best young drivers in some time converging in a single championship, outperforming its devil of a car and excelling under incredible pressure. It could be some time before the season is matched or bettered in junior single-seaters.