Most consistent so far in 2020: Bottas, finished in top 2 in every race.
Formula 2
Four components out of four races, meaning nobody finished in the top two more than once.
Most consistent in Styria: Zhou, finished in top 4 in both races.
Most consistent so far in 2020: Lundgaard, finished in top 6 in every race.
Formula 3
Sargeant is the only one to finish in top two more than once; it was P2 both times. Meanwhile, Pourchaire became the youngest F3 race winner ever, as well as the first F4-to-F3 rookie to score points this season.
Most consistent in Styria: Beckmann, finished in top 3 in both races.
Most consistent so far in 2020: Beckmann, finished in top 7 in every race.
Administrative divisions of Austria got a bit more attention with the introduction of Styrian Grand Prix. It still sounds to me as if someone was rearranging the letters of Austria trying to come up with a name for the second race at the same track, and got it slightly wrong. Which is unfortunate because Staurian Grand Prix pretty much has Alpha Tauri’s name in it, reinforcing the Red Bull affiliation of the venue.
Anyway, after two rounds of qualifying are done, there are only a few drivers who won the intra-team qualifying competition in both, partly thanks to the wild wet weekend in … Styria. Here they are.
Formula 1: Gasly, Russell, Verstappen
Formula 2: Aitken, Drugovich, Ghiotto, Lundgaard, Ticktum, Zhou
Formula 3: Hughes, Lawson, Nannini, Novalak, Peroni, Verschoor
Remembering the names of Prema drivers isn’t so hard: a driver usually has the same name in 2020 as in 2019. But their affiliation with Ferrari Driver Academy is less stable. A Venn diagram of who is in Prema, who is in FDA, and who is in both, is called for.
But since the drivers are also divided by level, I will use a table instead.
Level
Prema only
Prema and FDA
FDA only
F2
Mick Schumacher Robert Shwartzman
Giuliano Alesi Marcus Armstrong Callum Ilott
F3
Oscar Piastri Frederik Vesti Logan Sargeant
Enzo Fittipaldi
FR
Oliver Rasmussen Jamie Chadwick
Arthur Leclerc Gianluca Petecof
F4
Sebastian Montoya Gabriele Mini Gabriele Bortoleto
Dino Beganovic
FDA is currently top-heavy, with 5 of 9 drivers competing in F2. This necessitates placing three of them outside of Prema’s F2 team. There is only one instance of Prema running non-FDA drivers while an FDA driver is left outside… this does not inspire confidence in Enzo Fittipaldi’s future in FDA.
Overall, the events went well, considering the circumstances: the pandemic, stormy weather on the track, technical issues with the broadcast. I appreciated the rare opportunity to understand the work of a broadcast director, given by the glitch that for half of the first race put through director’s voice instead of the commentators. The audience reached 1000 viewers during FRAC Race 2; the audience of USF4 topped at around 250.
FAN uses Vimeo to stream races. A few times I got stuck in a video stream that was not the current one: the solution was to refresh the page and click Live Streaming again, which moved me from an old stream (previous race or “this event has not started yet”) to the live picture.
It would be nice to have an archive of past FAN races. Hopefully this is something FAN is planning to add, along with a YouTube channel.
Both series feature strong grids in 2020, thanks in part to reduced competition (no Indy Lights in 2020, etc). There were 17 drivers in the FRAC event, including some familiar names: Lundqvist, Car, Pedersen,…. With 33 competitors in USF4, many of them new to single-seaters, it is no wonder that the first event had several delays due to accidents.
Jay Howard Driver Development (JHDD) entered with 6 drivers in USF4 and consistently took a few of the top spots. Previously, two of their F4 drivers were 1-2 in a testing session, which set up a joint interview with Christian Bogle (6’4” / 205 lbs) and Nolan Siegel (5’4” / 100 lbs). Apparently the former has been cutting weight while the latter eats a cupcake before each race, so the contrast in appearance might be getting smaller with time.
So far, JHDD appears to put more emphasis on driver promotion than most USF4/FRAC teams. Not nearly as much as Prema does in European series, but that’s a high bar to meet…
By the way, this video was shot before Roman Stanek was replaced by Jamie Chadwick in Prema’s FREC lineup. Roman appears in group shots while Jamie’s solo shots are obviously late additions.
I do not enjoy seeing essentially fake entries used to boost grid size so it would meet the FIA requirement for Super License points (looking at you, “Ret DNS DNS” drivers at the bottom of the championship standings). So I am not going to say much about this generally uninspiring series of events. Instead, here is the championship table sorted by the average number of points earned per race.
Driver
Races
Points per race
Joey Alders
15
17.7
Sebastián Fernández
6
16.0
Jack Doohan
15
15.3
Mikhael Belov
3
13.0
Nikita Mazepin
15
12.4
Devlin DeFrancesco
9
11.2
Daniel Cao
3
10.3
Jamie Chadwick
15
9.3
Pietro Fittipaldi
15
7.9
Yu Kanamaru
15
6.9
James Yu
15
4.7
Jake Hughes
6
4.0
Tatiana Calderón
9
3.4
Tommy Smith
15
3.2
Miki Koyama
3
2.0
Alessio Deledda
15
1.4
Khaled Al Qubaisi
3
0.7
Thomas Luedi
15
0.2
The unexpected success of Alders got its share of headlines, but I would also remark on Belov’s 4th place by average points, considering that he came directly from F4. At the moment it is unclear where either of them is headed next: hopefully, Formula Renault Eurocup.
The late addition of Jehan Daruvala to the team reshuffled the standings, so here is an update. Because Daruvala’s statistics are current as of today, for the sake of consistency I updated Lawson and Tsunoda who took part in Toyota Racing Series 2020. Generally, Lawson’s statistics got slightly better and Tsunoda’s slightly worse.
Lawson, Hauger, and Tsunoda end up in the top half of the roster more often than others. Obviously, they did not participate in the same series: some statistics of Daruvala and Vips are lower because of the stronger competition they faced recently.
It was a close one. Igor Fraga vs Liam Lawson, points after each race:
Fraga wins 362 : 356
They were always within 20 points of each other:
The impact of 3rd race at Hampton Downs looms over the rest
That one Hampton Downs race, where Lawson briefly lost power and got hit from behind, had disproportionate impact on the championship, more than any race victory by either driver.
Fraga and Lawson are headed to FIA F3 next. I recalculated the TRS results using FIA F3 scoring, which also awards reduced points for reversed grid races. Result: Lawson wins 226:216.
F3 scoring: Lawson wins 226:216
By F3 scoring, Lawson led almost throughout the championship, only trailing once, by 1 point, after his Hampton Downs retirement.
This graph is not as much dominated by a single race.
Neither competitor ever finished below 8th place. Comparing the scoring systems, one can conclude that TRS essentially gives about 10 points just for finishing, or equivalently imposes a 10 point penalty for a non-finish.
Place
TRS
F3
TRS rev
F3 rev
1
35
25
20
15
2
31
18
18
12
3
27
15
16
10
4
24
12
14
8
5
22
10
12
6
6
20
8
10
4
7
18
6
9
2
8
16
4
8
1
“rev” = reversed grid races
Final remark: in the points-free comparison of sorted results, from best to worst, Lawson beats or matches Fraga in all except the last line.
Fraga
vs
Lawson
1
=
1
1
=
1
1
=
1
1
=
1
2
<
1
2
=
2
2
=
2
3
<
2
3
=
3
4
<
3
4
=
4
5
=
5
6
<
5
7
<
6
8
>
Ret
Last line trumped the rest of them
(By the way, I am glad that Fraga won, I was rooting for him. But that is besides the point.)
