No points for Trident after a good qualifying by Meguetounif

The Feature Race, which concluded the second round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship, held in Sakhir, saw the Trident Motorsport drivers miss out on the points zone. The fight in the middle of the group, in addition to excessive tyre wear, did not allow the drivers to express themselves at their best on the Bahrain International Circuit.

Sami Meguetounif, who started from seventh position on the starting grid of the Feature Race, initially used the Option tyres to maintain contact with the top positions. Switching to the harder Prime tyres, the twenty-year-old from Marseille was unable to maintain the same pace, slipping to the middle of the group and crossing the finish line in fifteenth position.

Max Esterson, on the other hand, paid the price for a difficult qualifying session, in which the American could not do better than the seventeenth time. Despite being on the strategy that included the Option tyres in the final phase, Esterson lost too much time in the early stages of the race. Due to traffic and an intermittent race pace, the 22-year-old from New York ended the Feature Race twenty-first, despite having set the ninth-fastest lap of the race.

Now the series will reconvene next weekend in Jeddah, on a street track with a unique layout, where two races open to any outcome are expected.

Giacomo Ricci, Team Manager: “This is not the result we would have expected after the positive qualifying session, especially for Meguetounif. The French driver maintained a solid pace in the first phase of the race, but dropped after the tyre change and was unable to secure a points finish. Esterson's Feature Race was instead conditioned by a poorer qualifying and a race pace that did not allow him to recover positions”.