Power cuts lead to pre-race shakedown oddity in Australia

Two drivers who did encounter that issue were Luke Browning (Hitech) and Leonardo Fornaroli (Invicta) who eventually finished second and third respectively in the Saturday F2 sprint race.

Fornaroli said he had an electrical issue in qualifying as he began his first flying lap, while Browning added: “I think I lost three-and-a-half tenths [of a second] on my best lap. It would have put us roughly fourth, third on the [feature race] grid. A lot of people had it on the grid.”

The issue was reportedly only “partially solved” between practice and qualifying on Friday. 

To ensure it had been fully rectified, F2 held a 15-minute Saturday morning shakedown session before the sprint race with all of the cars turning laps on ‘travel tyres’ - wet-weather tyres normally used to roll cars from the F2 paddock to the Formula 1 paddock for races.

“It was fun to drive 15 minutes in a row with rain tyres on the track,” said sprint race winner Joshua Duerksen (AIX). “They looked quite slick after the shakedown! It was an interesting experience.”

The pre-race warm-up session is an unusual occurrence in the FIA championships, and it evoked those that preceded Formula 1 races until 2003.

Teams were given the use of non-nominated planks and brake discs - to prevent them from wearing planks and brakes that would be used in the races - during this shakedown in Australia.