Trident open Miami weekend with a brilliant second from Laurens Van Hoepen
The FIA Formula 2 Championship’s second round of the season kicked off on the semi-urbancircuit of Miami Gardens, which today saw the F.2 drivers compete in the Sprint Race. The qualifying session was a mixed bag for Trident Motorsport. Laurens Van Hoepen posted a strong ninth-fastest time, while John Bennett had to settle for fifteenth.
Starting from second place, due to the top-ten reversed positions on the grid, Van Hoepen immediately attempted to grab the lead. On his debut at the Florida circuit, the 20-year-old Dutchman then slightly lost pace, slipping to third place on lap five.
The response was immediate, with Van Hoepen retaking second place on the following lap. The Trident Motorsport driver then raced for several laps in the leader's slipstream, finally launching an attack on lap 13 and taking the lead.
Van Hoepen, after just one lap, was forced to give up and found himself back in second place. Excellently supported by the Trident Motorsport technical staff, the Dutchman waited until the final laps, when he received the green light from the pit wall to attack. Van Hoepen then took the lead in the final corners of the Miami Sprint Race.
However, the Dutch driver couldn’t defend his lead until the checkered flag. In the final meters of the race, the Dutchman dropped to second place and crossed the finish line just seventeen hundredths of a second behind the winner. This result allows him to consolidate his second place in the overall standings for FIA Formula 2 Championship drivers, just nine points behind the leader.
Trident Motorsport, thanks to Van Hoepen's eight points, has snatched third place in the Team standings.
John Bennett also had a positive Sprint Race on the Miami street circuit. Starting fifteenth, the twenty-two-year-old Englishman immediately attempted to make up ground. With an intense but flawless race, Bennett climbed the standings to twelfth place. Only at the end did the Salisbury driver lose a position, finishing the Sprint Race thirteenth. Regardless of the final result, Bennett's performance bodes well for tomorrow's Feature Race, where strategy could allow the Englishman to try to get into the points.
The Trident Motorsport technical staff, together with the drivers, will analyze the data collected in the Sprint Race as part of their usual preparation for the weekend's main race, scheduled for tomorrow at 12:30 local time (GMT -4), a few hours before the Miami Grand Prix.
Giacomo Ricci: “After a positive qualifying session, the first race held on the Miami circuit gave us great satisfaction and confirmed the strong start to the championship in Melbourne. Laurens Van Hoepen fought until the end to climb to the top step of the podium in the Sprint Race, which the Dutch driver ran at an extremely competitive level. Considering the unknowns of the new track, the second place finish gives us the motivation to continue improving. John Bennett also showed good race pace and mounted a convincing comeback, with plenty of overtaking moves. These are all elements that lay the foundation for a competitive Feature Race for Trident Motorsport.”