In Saturday’s sprint race at the Hungaroring, Hitech’s Gabriele Minì converted his reverse grid pole to his second race win of the season after his feature race masterclass in Monaco. This win now places the Italian third in the drivers’ standings, 51 points behind championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto, who finished second. After some misfortune and a couple of mixed results in the last three race weekends, Minì finally took to the top step of the podium once again, winning his first sprint race in the process. Feeder Series spoke to him right after his race-winning performance.

By Daniele Spadi

Minì, who came out victorious from the feature race in Monaco, claimed his fourth podium of the season after a great performance that saw him clinch win number two in his rookie season.

“It’s been a while!” the Italian said when asked about his return to the top step of the podium. “It’s very nice to win once again. Of course, I would prefer to be in a feature race but still, it’s always a win and it’s very nice.”

Since his maiden win around the Principality, Minì had some mixed performances that made him lose touch with championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto, who now sits 51 points clear of Minì after a spectacular move at the final corner of the race. With five races to go, three of which award 25 points to the winner, everything is still to play for, but the Alpine Academy driver will need more performances like today’s to try and take the fight to the Brazilian.

A complicated race

After securing the reverse grid pole on Friday, Minì had his eyes on the sprint race win right away. However, a great getaway was not enough to contain Jenzer’s Nikita Bedrin, who pulled off a great move around the outside of turn 1 to take the lead of the race right at the beginning.

“My start itself was really good, the jump was good. Just into turn 1, I braked at my normal braking point, and Nikita did a really good job braking really late,” he explained. “Of course, once you are stuck on the inside, you don’t want to understeer into the other guy on the outside, so I just let him by.”

Though the start didn’t play into his hands, the Alpine Academy driver stuck to the back of his rival before pulling off a DRS-assisted overtake on the inside of turn 1 at the start of lap 8. 

“I think at the point, [Nikita] understood it was not easy to keep me behind because he was struggling already with the tyres, so he did not defend too hard, and it was relatively easy with the DRS.”

Minì also had to face a troublesome safety car restart with just three laps to go and a further virtual safety car shortly after. With very worn tyres and a lot of pressure from Bedrin and Bortoleto behind him, the Hitech driver pulled a two-second gap in less than two laps, leaving the Jenzer driver vulnerable to the championship leader’s attacks. 

“To be honest, it was really tricky,” Minì admitted. “The amount of graining, marbles and things on the tyres that were already preventing us from pushing more was a lot, especially for me that I was right behind the safety car. [The restart] was really tough. I just understeered and oversteered a bit everywhere. In the end, I managed to get a good run out of the last corner and I managed to keep the position into turn 1.”

Once again, tyre wear was a big factor in yesterday’s race, as the drivers struggled to keep their Pirelli tyres in check throughout the sprint race’s 19 laps. Degradation turned out to be really high around the Hungaroring, and many drivers had no tyre life left in the closing stages, which made it even more interesting for the spectators, but definitely less fun for the drivers themselves. 

“It was all about managing [the tyres], because at the end we were running six, seven seconds slower than the beginning. So you can imagine degradation was really high, and it was all about just run until the end.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency