Jeddah, no points in the first race on the shores of the Red Sea

The third round of the season of the FIA Formula 2 Championship opened on the very fast street circuit of Jeddah with today’s Sprint Race. In the qualifying session, the Trident Motorsport drivers paid dearly for their lack of experience on the circuit on the shores of the Red Sea. Sami Meguetounif set the fifteenth-fastest time, while Max Esterson obtained the nineteenth-fastest time.

Due to the difficult qualifying, the Sprint Race saw the drivers of the team with operational headquarters in Ossona fighting at the back. The street circuit along the city’s coast did not favor the comeback of Meguetounif and Esterson, who were forced to struggle with the traffic. Furthermore, the poor feeling with the track did not play in their favor.

First, a Virtual Safety Car and then, the entry of the safety car did not benefit the Trident Motorsport drivers. Sami Meguetounif eventually finished the Sprint Race in sixteenth place, while Max Esterson crossed the line in nineteenth place.

The Trident Motorsport technical staff will now use the data collected in the Sprint Race in their usual preparation work for the Feature Race, scheduled for tomorrow at 16:25 local time, GMT -3, a few hours before the Jeddah Grand Prix.

Giacomo Ricci, Team Manager, commented:  “We are not satisfied with today’s performance. The drivers could not easily find the path on a track they did not know and the poor feeling determined the poor qualifying. Obviously starting from the back made the race uphill and there were no opportunities to recover. Now we will analyse the data collected today. The Feature Race, with the tyre change, offers more possibilities to recover thanks to the strategies. We will try to get a better result tomorrow with a more competitive performance”.