Formula 2’s chaotic opening weekend in Melbourne featured power cuts for multiple cars. In response to issues plaguing Friday’s running, the championship added a last-minute shakedown to the Saturday morning schedule. This week, F2 and F3 CEO Bruno Michel explained the issues to Feeder Series and other selected media.

By Martin Lloyd

The Saturday morning shakedown, added to the schedule late Friday evening, was unprecedented in recent F2 history. The 15-minute session allowed F2 to test solutions that they had worked on overnight after the power cuts had compromised the efforts of multiple drivers in Friday’s practice and qualifying sessions.

“We had some issues with the loading of the ECU [electrical control unit] and there was too much information,” Michel said. “Sometimes it was cutting out and then coming back immediately. So we were able to decrease the amount of information that was in the ECU overnight. We were working on that.”

Michel also said he realised that power cuts in a race situation could have had more serious consequences.

“There could have been a safety issue because you [can] imagine the start of the race with some cars having an electrical power cut at the start of the race and the cars behind [colliding]. It would have been an issue, so we worked quite heavily with the FIA to find the solution, and we did.” 

F2 held the 15-minute shakedown at 10:25 local, less than four hours before the start of the sprint race.

“We wanted to be sure before going racing that what we had done was correct,” Michel said about the shakedown. “We have done this shakedown of 15 minutes in the morning, and we have noticed that we had zero electrical power cut issues with the 22 cars. And so we decided that it was absolutely safe to go racing.

“But, yeah, it was quite a tense weekend. It was quite a tense night, let’s put it that way, between the FIA and ourselves, but we were quite happy with the result.”

The sprint race proceeded without issue, with Jak Crawford the only mechanical retirement. The feature race on Sunday was cancelled because of torrential rain, and Michel confirmed to the media that it would not be rescheduled. 

The power cuts and race cancellation added to a chaotic F2 weekend off track. On Thursday, three teams were sanctioned for adding extra sensors to their cars at the pre-season Bahrain test. This resulted in 10-place grid drops for both DAMS, Rodin and Trident drivers for both scheduled races in Melbourne, as well as large fines. With the feature race’s cancellation, the grid drops will not carry over to Bahrain.

Additionally, the four cars directly involved – those of Crawford, Amaury Cordeel, Alex Dunne and Max Esterson – were excluded from the final day of last week’s in-season test at Bahrain. Kush Maini and Sami Meguetounif were allowed to participate as the sensors were not added to their cars. 

Elsewhere, Michel also touched on the new-for-2025 Dallara-built  F3 car, which features revamped aerodynamics now closely resembling the philosophy of F1 and F2 designs. Michel said he thought the car met pace expectations.

He added, “Number one, when you come up with a new car, what’s important is the reliability because we can do all the testing in the world with one development car, [but] it’s always very different when you have 30 cars on the grid or 30 cars in a test session. 

“We’re happy with the product that we have come up with, and the teams and the drivers are extremely positive.”

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