Formula 2 2024 season: Mastering the rain at Silverstone and switching between F2 and F1

 

 

Antonelli made headlines on Saturday at Silverstone by taking his first F2 race win. The Mercedes junior - who is tipped to be a contender for the team's vacant F1 seat in 2025 - dominated the wet F2 sprint race from pole position.

 

Having started on pole, Antonelli had the relative luxury of ‘clean air’. In dry conditions, this is favourable because the driver out in front does not have to contend with turbulence, which can unsettle their car through corners - causing the car to slide more, contributing to higher tyre wear, and in turn potentially undoing the slipstream effect that lends a straightline speed advantage.

In wet conditions, being in front of the rest of the field ensures better visibility: Antonelli didn’t have to follow any cars (apart from the safety car) that emitted towering and obscuring sprays of water from the tyres and bodywork.

“Today was a special one because it was my first [victory], first of all,” said Antonelli. “And, it's a track I really like and also the conditions were difficult. The next goal is to try and win one in dry conditions.”

Of course, keeping the car on track in wet conditions is an art in itself, and poor visibility isn’t the only obstacle drivers face. They have to adapt their racing lines, the fastest route through the corner, when driving in the wet - shunning the usual racing line as the rubber that is laid down there in dry conditions proves slippery in the wet.

As extra grip can be found off the normally beaten path, drivers have to use their own intuition to feel their way through every lap. With rainfall changing from one minute to the next, so was each driver’s path through the turns of Silverstone.

Antonelli mastered this on Saturday, eventually setting the fastest lap and amassing an 8.6-second lead by the chequered flag.

 

Four F2 drivers - Alpine junior driver Jack Doohan, Williams junior Franco Colapinto, Red Bull junior Hadjar, and Haas-bound Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman - took part in the first F1 practice session at Silverstone, giving them valuable experience while satisfying the rules that mandate each team must run a rookie driver in two Free Practice 1 sessions per season.

 

On Friday morning at Silverstone, those four F2 drivers had less than two hours between the first F2 session and the first F1 session - before returning to their respective F2 cars for qualifying in the afternoon.

 

“It's really hard to go from F2 to F1 within one and a half hours,” said Hadjar, who took pole position and won Sunday’s F2 feature race, securing the championship lead over Hitech’s Paul Aron.

 

The Campos driver explained that his “references” - the visual and tactile points that infer to him where to brake on track and when to turn into a corner - were the biggest changes between the two cars, and switching between them requires compartmentalisation.

“It completely changes your references and your feeling with the car,” added Hadjar. “It’s completely different when you go from power steering [in an F1 car] to none, so it felt quite heavy, to be honest, and it just messes up the references a bit. The first [challenge] was to adapt and the second one was to deliver.”

Antonelli, who has previously tested a Mercedes F1 car, added: “The F1 car is quite a different car, and I have to say it gives you a lot of confidence when you drive it because it has so much downforce that you can really push it. I think it's all about adapting the best way possible.

“To be honest, when I jumped from F1 to F2, I felt pretty good in the F2 just because in the F1, everything happened so fast that when you go back in the F2, everything moves just quite a bit slower - so you have way more time to think.

“But, in the end, the job of the driver is also to try and adapt, as best as possible, from one car to the other. I have to say the first time I jumped from the F1 to the F2 [at the Red Bull Ring in April 2024], I struggled a little bit.”

Apart from F1 cars having power steering, which takes some getting used to for those graduating from F2, the biggest difference between the two at Silverstone is that F1 cars produce enough downforce to take many of the corners at full speed - and therefore they are set up with a low-drag and low-downforce set-up for this weekend.

F2 cars meanwhile rely on high downforce set-ups to ensure drivers can tackle the British Grand Prix venue’s high-speed corners as fast as possible - which can prove jarring for drivers transitioning between the two different disciplines at Silverstone.