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Formula 2 2024 season: Strategy, a race start issue and dirty air make for a unique weekend in Austria
by Valentin Khorounzhiy
7min read
The shortest track on the Formula 2 calendar in terms of laptime but not the actual length of the lap, the Red Bull Ring – which hosted round seven of the 2024 season – is both more of a conventional challenge than that suggests, yet still extreme in its own right.
Invicta Racing’s Gabriele Bortoleto takes the chequered flag to win the Austrian F2 feature race
The conventional part of the challenge is the range of corners covered, with its layout managing to incorporate both a quintessential low-speed corner – Turn 3, not only at a sharp angle but also uphill – and also a variety of medium-to-high speed offerings.
The sequencing of those corners, though, means races at the Red Bull Ring can take on a unique and challenging character - which was evident in the sprint race.
In the other contest, the feature race, the key decision was a classic Formula 2 strategy call – and it could be argued that, while execution by drivers was certainly key, the bulk of the podium battle had actually played out in the realms of pre-race team-by-team analysis.
How does one strategy supersede another in Austria?
The contest for victory in Sunday's feature race – the longer one, with more strategic variance and many more points on offer – was effectively monopolised by two South American competitors, McLaren F1 junior Gabriele Bortoleto (Invicta Racing) and Williams F1 junior Franco Colapinto (MP Motorsport).
But it was not the usual picture of a victory fight – instead, racing's version of shadowboxing, a pure laptime battle.
Both drivers faced the usual F2 Sunday dilemma. In the vast majority of cases, every F2 team will know that it needs to use the two compounds – the weekend's harder tyre and the weekend's softer tyre – in some sequence. In Austria, the harder option (slower but more durable) was Pirelli's soft compound and the softer (faster but less durable) was Pirelli's supersoft.
F2 championship leader Paul Aron (Hitech) using the soft tyres during the F2 sprint race at the Red Bull Ring
At the most cursory glance, it feels like it shouldn't really matter to the race outcome. Everyone has the same number of laps to cover and the same tyre allocation. Therefore, does it really matter whether your strategy is soft-supersoft or supersoft-soft?
In fact, it matters an enormous deal – yet, in Austria and at most other tracks, choosing between the two was for every driver a decision built out of a myriad of minor factors, and weighing up those factors was the key challenge.
Colapinto had started on the harder tyre, the soft, and felt he had "used a bit too much" of their lifespan. But that was also a consequence of the nature of the strategy; the tyre wear is worse at the start of the race because the cars are considerably heavier due to fuel, which naturally evaporates during the race.
But Colapinto's opening stint was 32 laps (in a 40-lap race), whereas for those on the more conventional supersoft-soft strategy it was seven to nine laps.
"When you push with so much fuel in the car... I think it's not the same," Colapinto said.
"When you do the opposite strategy, it's always like you're putting more energy on the tyres on the first few laps - because you're doing the starts [warm-up lap and actual race], you're doing the burnouts [to heat the tyre], you're much more aggressive on the warm-up, and the tyre is suffering more.
"That's why, if you're going to have a [starting] tyre [for] six laps and then you're going to change, it's a bit of an advantage. But if you have to use this tyre for 30 laps, like I did, then you start to struggle at some point, and you start to pay the price in the beginning of the race, in the warm-up and all that. So, I think I did pay that price a bit."
That was why Colapinto repeatedly referred to it as a "risky" strategy, and he felt his tyres never really recovered from the amount of heat generated by that early pushing.
Despite that, it looked like he had the initiative in the early stint. When Bortoleto came into the pits to swap out from his starting supersoft tyre, Colapinto was right there with him for the lead and was unleashed into clean air, while Bortoleto had to fight through the slower cars staying out on Colapinto's strategy.
MP Motorsport’s Franco Colapinto makes a pitstop during the F2 feature race in Austria
The cars Bortoleto was having to clear were at that point on the same tyre as him, the soft, just a few laps older. So, the overtakes weren't necessarily easy, and every lap spent behind those cars, particularly through the high-speed corners, punished the rubber that needed to take the Brazilian to the end of the race. This was at least partly due to the cars themselves generating heat, but mostly due to "dirty air" – more on that shortly.
Being stuck behind DAMS driver Jak Crawford for a couple of laps "destroyed" his rubber a bit, Bortoleto admitted, but he couldn't just force the overtaking move, because it risked putting the tyres in a temperature range that they would never recover from.
This limitation was possibly why Pirelli projected the 'alternate strategy' – the one Colapinto was running – as the quicker one.
Yet in the end any advantage Colapinto may have had was a mirage. Running the end stint on the supersofts meant he had a much easier time clearing cars ahead of him, and he returned to second place, overtaking a rival in each of the final three laps.
But Bortoleto was out of reach. While the softs did take a beating, their pace did stay relatively consistent compared to the supersofts – which were quickly "super overheated" on Colapinto's car and felt "like wet [tyres] on the dry".
Second-placed driver Franco Colapinto (L), feature race winner Gabriele Bortoleto (centre) and third-place finisher Isack Hadjar (R) on the podium in Austria
F2 race starts – The risk-reward of the clutch
As PHM driver Joshua Duerksen put it, "both strategies can work, it just depends on the luck you get [in terms of] track position and stuff like this".
Duerksen was one of those running the race-winning strategy – that of Bortoleto – and yet admitted that in hindsight he would've favoured the Colapinto-esque soft-supersoft strategy. But part of the reason Colapinto had gone for that was extremely situational. His MP Motorsport team-mate Dennis Hauger was on pole for the race, and starting on supersofts.
In pre-race deliberations, putting them both on the same strategy would've been exceptionally risky, because the chance of it hurting Colapinto's or Hauger's race would be high.
Because the supersofts were not holding up, there was a huge punishment for running them even a lap too long – but changing the tyres on both of their cars at the same lap would've inevitably penalised one of MP's drivers (as the team has just the one pitcrew and just the one pitbox, so the driver behind would have to wait).
MP Motorsport driver Dennis Hauger in the crowded pitlane during F2 practice in Austria
Hauger, though, only ended up a theoretical factor. Getting off the grid on the formation lap, he stalled – one of several drivers to do so – and had to start from the pitlane, his race effectively ruined.
The F2 car's clutch is "complicated", said Duerksen. "You want to know [be sure] which clutch map [settings] to use for the start."
But he also described it as a risk-reward play. "I think if you want to make a really good start, then the chances are really high to stall. If you want to make it safe, I don't think you will stall this car."
Now, drivers don't need "a really good start" on the formation lap, but they still need to carry out an approximation of the race start – because it is invaluable practice right ahead of the real thing.
Hauger, though, was clear this wasn't a matter of taking too much risk.
"Just the clutch map, obviously completely wrong, we went into stall as soon as I released the clutch. Anti-stall should've kicked in as well! But I think something was wrong [in the settings], so it didn't kick in. We're on the safe side [theoretically] in the [practice] start. So, something must've been really off.
"I couldn't have done anything differently. I would've probably stalled with 80 percent throttle, as well."
Prema’s Oliver Bearman, on the right, leads the sprint race in Austria
Why qualifying progression mattered so much
Another factor that was on display at the Red Bull Ring, and that had a massive impact on how the longer race played out, was the dynamics of the series' 30-minute qualifying session.
It was laid bare and emphasised specifically by the misfortune of Campos Racing’s rapid championship contender Isack Hadjar.
Hadjar led practice and was ahead at the halfway point in qualifying – which usually spans two runs – when he had a major mechanical failure, removing him from the session.
He was, at that point, the only driver in the 1 minute 15 second range. Under a different format, having already set such a good lap, he would've escaped with his weekend relatively uncompromised. But the particulars of F2 qualifying meant six drivers jumped ahead of Hadjar on their second runs, with several drivers finding as much as a second between the first supersoft set and the second one.
"Most of it is obviously the fuel," said Hauger. F2 cars do not refuel during qualifying, so the car is much lighter for the second run. At the Red Bull Ring, drivers estimated the difference between high-fuel running and low-fuel running as being around 0.3 seconds.
Beyond that, Duerksen said, it's "the track evolution [more rubber being put down], and of course just the driving experience".
A big part of that "driving experience" is that drivers run the soft in practice and thus get their first taste of the supersoft in qualifying, so the first run understandably doesn't get maximised. "I think I underpushed a bit my first set, so just got things in place for the second set," explained Bortoleto, and that's likely to be the case for the vast majority of the field.
But Hadjar would've likely gained, too, of course. And it still stung at the end of the weekend, even after he'd recovered from seventh on the grid to a podium finish – because he'd felt he would've been firmly in podium contention, if not the outright winner, otherwise.
Dennis Hauger (MP Motorsport) who took pole position for the feature race but stalled on the formation lap and had to start the race from the pitlane
The dirty air effect
Another part of the equation - and one that came to the fore in both races but was particularly evident in the sprint, where the top-10 qualifiers are reversed - was so-called "dirty air".
F2 cars, like all the other single-seaters, have aerodynamics primarily designed to work in undisrupted, normal air. But when a car is ahead, it naturally punches a hole through that air - and while that comes with a welcome reduction in drag on the straight, in the corners it robs the car of downforce and thus cornering.
And given that the Pirelli tyres need a lot of care, when that cornering ability is taken away by the car ahead more energy is being put into the tyres to actually get them to make the corner - which means more temperature and more wear.
"I feel like the dirty air has been quite good in F2, ever since I've raced with it," said Campos Racing's Pepe Marti.
Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli chases ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins during the sprint race in Austria, where the dirty air effect was pronounced through the circuit’s high-speed corners
Here I think it's maybe one of the worst places, because you have so many consecutive high-speed corners."
The overtaking aid Drag Reduction System (DRS) is available on all three of the Red Bull Ring's big straights, and in F2 this can translate to around a 0.4s laptime gain, according to drivers. But those three straights come consecutively - and if you haven't got the overtake done by then, you then have to deal with dirty air for the rest of the lap.
Marti was chasing the sprint leader and eventual winner, Prema's Oliver Bearman, who admitted he was actively modulating his lines to ensure the air was as disrupted for Marti as possible. What also aided his efforts was the fact Marti had damaged his left front wing endplate at the very start – which meant his downforce was already considerably compromised.
Most of the race was a concertina between the two, Marti gaining in the DRS zones but dropping back in the high-speed corners, until Bearman finally made the crucial breakaway.