Author: Calculus7

Some memorable moments of the first round of the first single-seater championship of 2021.

Round 1: Martí crash

The tire tracks explain what happened to the 100-meter mark, but how did the 50-meter mark get destroyed? Here is a link to the moment of incident: unfortunately, for a while the camera was following other cars.

Could motor racing be more interesting when more is left to viewers’ imagination? F4 UAE tested this theory throughout the weekend.

Race 2: four-way fight for P3

Given that 8 out of 14 drivers are in the same team (Xcel) would not it be nice for them to have a few distinct liveries? The minor color accents do not help very much when following the action through hand-held camera from large distance. So, props to Kirill Smal and his SMP Racing sponsors for making at least one of the Xcel cars instantly recognizable with its tricolor livery. Also, black car of Enzo Trulli and red-and-white of Hamda Al Qubaisi helped in watching the four-way battle for third; the fourth car involved was Jamie Day’s in standard Xcel livery.

Smal eventually took P3 on the last lap of the race.

Link to the beginning of this battle (unlike other races, this one was not streamed live on Youtube but appeared there later.

Race 3: fight for P3

Once again, Smal fought for, and took P3, where he finished. Maybe with better qualifying position in later rounds he’ll go further…

Race 4: before and after SC

Unlike the others, Race 4 uses a reverse grid, flipping top 8 positions at the end of Race 3. Yet again, Smal came from behind to take P3 shortly before SC appearance. Then he took P2 at the restart. And then…. he won the race but the lead change was never shown. Once again, more is left to our imagination.

Overall

Minor technical issues aside, it’s great to have single-seater racing back and being broadcast live on F4 UAE channel. I think the time display ought to be improved: having yellow/green/purple coding of sectors is nice, but the size of gap to the leader or to the driver directly in front would be more informative.

Gabriele Minì won the 2020 championship by a large margin, but how does it compare to other years? With 7 seasons of the oldest FIA F4 championship behind us, let’s compare the champions by their point margin relative to the runner-up, sorted from largest to smallest.

Quite a few familiar names in this table. Instead of a complete “where are they know”, here is a sample.

• F1: Mick Schumacher, Lance Stroll
• F2: Marcus Armstrong, Guanyu Zhou
• F3: Enzo Fittipaldi, Dennis Hauger

There are good reasons to have reverse grid races in Formula 2. There may also be good reasons to award 4 points for pole position, though I am not aware of them. Anyway, Formula 1 does not have either thing, and only awards 1 point for fastest lap (with a slight difference in rules, which I think is immaterial for the following).

Top five in the final standings 2020 Formula 2 season:

And here they are with the points awarded according to F1 logic: no reverse grid races, no pole position points, 1 point for fastest lap.

The drivers moving up to F1 rank 1, 2, 4 in F1 order instead of 1, 3, 5 in F2 order.

This is not an attempt to calculate exactly how many Super Licence points each driver has. Instead, the goal is to find how many points they earned in the last two seasons of FIA Formula 2 and Formula 3. The previous iteration (for 2018-19) is at Super Licence points, simplified.

In the 2017-20 format of Formula 2 weekend, a driver could score at most:

• 4 for pole position
• 25 for feature race win
• 2 for fastest lap in feature race
• 15 for sprint race win
• 2 for fastest lap in sprint race

for the maximum possible total of 48. Nobody reached the maximum, and nobody will, since the weekend format will be different in 2021. The best total was 45 earned by Leclerc in Baku 2017: he scored all of the above except the sprint race result was P2, with 12 points instead of 15.

Tsunoda scored the second-best total of 43 in the very last weekend in this format, Sakhir 2020.

Formula 3 used a slightly different format in 2020 and 2019, with 10 positions reversed for sprint race in 2020. Placing the feature race winner at P10 instead of P8 naturally reduced the totals.

In 2019, the top F3 results were:

• 39 points for Armstrong in Sochi (again, a season finale)
• 37 for Shwartzman in Barcelona
• 37 for Lundgaard in Budapest

In 2020, the top F3 result was 32, achieved three times: by Zendeli at Spa, and, surprisingly, both Piastri and Pourchaire did it over the same weekend in Budapest.