MP Motorsport rookie Oliver Goethe finished fourth in Sunday’s Formula 2 feature race in Qatar, his best finish in the series, one day after an engine failure in the sprint race cost him possible points and valuable track time on a new circuit.

By Michael McClure

After stepping up to F2 in late August as the replacement for the F1-bound Franco Colapinto, F3 graduate Goethe had a string of challenging races. Being caught up in first-lap incidents in both the Monza sprint race and Baku feature race forced him to retire from both contests, while he failed to score in the two races in between.

In Qatar last weekend, Goethe qualified eighth, his first time in the qualifying top 10, and finished the feature race fourth behind title contenders Paul Aron, Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto. Those earned him his first 12 points in F2 at a circuit where he had never raced before.

The German driver lost five places in the first five turns because of a slow start but recovered four of them by lap four. He then benefitted from a well-timed safety car intervention on lap nine, which enabled him to lose less time during his mandatory pit stop than many of his rivals did.

Speaking to Feeder Series in the paddock after the race, Goethe admitted he “had some luck with the safety car” but also said “the pace was really strong” on the hard tyres.

“It was a really chaotic race,” he said. “[I] just about missed out on a podium, which would have been very nice after quite a lot of bad luck in the last few rounds, and yesterday especially. But nevertheless, I’m happy with how it went and happy with the pace of the team.”

Having started third in Saturday’s sprint race, Goethe had an engine failure on the fifth lap of 23 while running seventh. That meant the Red Bull junior entered Sunday’s race with less mileage than his rivals around the Lusail International Circuit, where F2 was racing for the first time.

“I had to adapt quickly,” he said. “It might have hindered me a little bit at the start of the race, having a bit less knowledge of the tyres. I learned a lot on the mediums and I learned on the hards. At the end I feel like I managed really well.”

On lap 23, towards the end of his hard-tyre stint, Goethe came up on Luke Browning, running on rapidly degrading hard tyres. Hadjar overtook the ART Grand Prix driver at Turn 7, but Goethe didn’t have as easy a path through when he tried to pass at Turn 10.

“There was Browning in front on older tyres and a different strategy, so he didn’t make it easy for me,” Goethe said. “[He] just completely turned in on me and that made me get a bad exit. I had Dino [Beganovic] behind trying to overtake both of us, so I was really annoyed with how he defended.

“I couldn’t let them two pass, but they were on the inside, so I tried the cutback move and pulled it off perfectly and managed to overtake both of them. It was a great move.”

That overtake through the triple-apex right-hander from Turns 12 to 14 put Goethe back in position to chase Hadjar over the final 10 minutes of the race. Both were attempting to finish within five seconds of race leader Bortoleto, who was carrying a five-second penalty for crossing the white line after entering pit lane.

The MP Motorsport driver reduced his two-second gap to Hadjar to less than a half a second with two laps to go but never got close enough to make a move. He ended up finishing 1.033 seconds away from Hadjar on track and 0.621 seconds behind Bortoleto, who fell to third.

“I think that was my only opportunity to overtake [Hadjar],” he said. “The pace was really strong. I managed to catch him a lot. I was a tiny bit too far to make a move. It’s not a big braking zone in Turn 1, so it would have been sketchy to send it.

“We were still fighting for Gabriel’s position. He had a penalty, so I didn’t want to fight too much as well [and] just about missed out. If I did it again, maybe I could have passed him, but it was very close.”

Goethe’s fourth-place result was a fitting reward for his mechanics, who had stayed hours later than others Saturday night to work on his car. It also keeps MP in mathematical contention for the teams’ title. They sit third overall, 62 points behind leaders Invicta Racing, with 65 points still on offer. Hitech GP are 2.5 points behind them.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency / Red Bull Content Pool