ZANE MALONEY
The 20-year-old from Barbados reflects on his astonishing double win in F2’s opener with Rodin
The Bahrain Formula 2 season opener 10 days ago was a great weekend. In F2 you can never plan for what’s going to happen so you just do the best job you can. Our goal was to win the feature race and qualify on pole, so to win the sprint race too was a big bonus, though I didn’t get pole which I should have done.
Since Abu Dhabi, last year’s finale, I’ve been driving a lot better and from testing we knew the pace was there. In Abu Dhabi’s race weekend I was always towards the front, as I was again in testing. Over the Christmas break I worked on understanding how I did good in Abu Dhabi and how can I do even better this season. The biggest thing was making yourself as close as possible to the limit every time you go on track, like top Formula 1 drivers do.
As mentioned, in Bahrain a little annoying thing is that I should have got pole. I just made a mistake in Turn 1 on my best lap, got a bit too much exit kerb in Turn 3 and I was three tenths down already into Turn 4. I finished up just two-and a-bit tenths off pole. Other than that, it was a perfect weekend.
The sprint was just a great race. I had a good start from P8, had a good first lap and I was P4 after two laps, and then I realised we had quite a lot of pace. So I pushed the tyres a little harder than I wanted to just to get into the lead, but the thing in F2 is once you’re in the lead there’s a lot less dirty air, the tyres are cooler, everything is just running smoother.
In my climb I did a spectacular pass of Enzo Fittipaldi on the outside of the fast Turn 12. I was doing a different line to everyone in
Turn 11; that let me get alongside Enzo, and he’s a respectful driver so I went for it in a clean way, not a kamikaze move but on the limit. It was very satisfying, and it allowed me to get straight onto Zak O’Sullivan, who was on the hard tyre, and once I got past
Zak it was a realistic win.
One thing throughout my whole career is that racecraft, starts and lap ones have been positives of mine.
I qualified third for the feature race, and I saw the two ahead go for hard tyres for the start. While for us, through the data from testing and race one, starting on the soft was obvious. Plus I knew it was my chance to get the lead straight away, and our plan for the entire race was built around leading on lap one.
So I was very focused on the start; I knew that I needed to make it stick and to be leading out of Turn 1, which we made happen and it led us into a clean race and a second victory.
I have recently joined the Sauber Academy and become its reserve driver at grands prix. It was quite obvious last season from Sauber’s side that I wasn’t performing to my potential; it wasn’t an amazing season but the potential was always a lot higher.
It’s amazing to get the support from Sauber and when you’re in an F1 team environment there’s just so much that you can learn from. There’s so many knowledgeable people and people who have been around for a long time.
ADD Management deals with everything for where I’m going in my career and I let them do that, I’m just focused on driving the car as fast as I can and learning. It’d be like if one of the engineers within the team starts wandering off and thinking about something else then we’re not going to perform in our jobs. And I need to perform in F2 to have any chance at anything else in my future.
This year I’m going race by race, session by session. I’m a type of driver that the less thinking I do the better I do. So any time
I start thinking about a championship, it’s useless for me. Of course, you don’t go making stupid moves, but I’m going to try to be as high up as possible in every qualifying and every race. And if I do the best job I can, I know I’m going to be towards the sharp end.