Paul Aron grabbed his second Formula 2 podium of the year in Jeddah’s sprint race. The Hitech rookie finished third on the road but was later promoted to second when original race winner Richard Verschoor was disqualified.

By Steven Walton

Aron started the sprint from reverse-grid pole position and confidently led away at the start, but he did not have the pace to maintain the lead.

On lap eight, Aron was overtaken by Trident Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor, who won the race on track but was then disqualified for a non-compliant throttle map. On lap 18, Aron was shuffled back to third when MP Motorsport’s Dennis Hauger made his way by.

Verschoor’s disqualification meant that Hauger won the race and Aron finished second, with Van Amersfoort’s Enzo Fittipaldi promoted to the final step on the podium.

This is Aron’s second podium in as many Formula 2 race weekends. At last weekend’s season opener in Bahrain, a circuit with slower corners and a more abrasive surface relative to Jeddah, the Estonian driver also produced strong race results. He qualified 12th but recovered to fifth in the sprint race and third in the feature.

“[The Jeddah podium] shows that Bahrain wasn’t just an outlier and we really are in the game, me and Hitech,” he said in a press conference after the sprint race.

‘We cannot get comfortable yet’

In the post-race press conference, Aron told Feeder Series his results in Formula 2 have exceeded his pre-season expectations.

“I had a much easier time in Formula 3 testing, and I didn’t even get two podiums in the first two weekends there,” he said. Aron raced with Prema in F3 last season, and his best result from his first two weekends was third place in the Australia sprint race. He went on to finish third in the championship with a win and three more podiums.

The Jeddah podium means Aron now sits second in the F2 standings with 28 points. Rodin Motorsport’s Zane Maloney continues to lead the championship, now with 41 points.

Despite his high position in the standings, Aron told Feeder Series, “we cannot get comfortable yet”.

“It’s still easy to get it wrong at this early stage, and there is still a lot of work to do with this new car,” he said.

‘Work to do for tomorrow’

Aron said he would also have work to do in Saturday’s feature race, explaining that the sprint race “didn’t play out for us”.

“I think the safety car restart didn’t really suit the car we had. We had a car for a longer race,” he said. The safety car was deployed twice in the sprint race, on lap one and lap 10, while there was also a virtual safety car on lap 17.

“I’m still looking forward to tomorrow. It was not easy out there compared to Bahrain, but it will be interesting,” he said.

Though he qualified 10th, Aron starts tomorrow’s race ninth as polesitter Ollie Bearman has withdrawn from the F2 weekend to drive for Scuderia Ferrari in F1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Header photo credit: Sebastiaan Rozendaal / Dutch Photo Agency