The German youngster completed a strong debut with Campos Racing scoring valuable points for the championship. Boschung’s ninth place was a little reward after qualifying in sixth place on Friday
Campos Racing secured more points for the championship during FIA Formula 2’s round 5 at Monza’s Temple of Speed. Ralph Boschung and new teammate David Beckmann delivered strong performances during the weekend but the potential promised even better results, which finally didn’t come as a result of racing incidents. Anyway, the general feeling was very positive for the final events of the season.
Boschung and Beckmann rapidly showed strong pace on Friday’s free practice session. Beckmann posted the fourth-fastest time with a lap of 1m33.409s after completing 21 tours, the most number of laps of any driver. Boschung also set a promising time of 1m33.785s ahead of qualifying. In the afternoon, Swiss Boschung proved he was a driver to look at in close battle for pole position. On the red-marked soft compound, Boschung clocked a lap time of 1m32.609s to take provisional P1. Despite series leader Oscar Piastri managed to beat Boschung’s time later, Boschung still found extra pace to lower his previous best and posted a lap of 1m32.553s, 6th-fastest at the end of the session. Beckmann secured sprint race 1’s pole position on reverse grid by setting 10th-fastest lap time in qualifying with a lap of 1m32.699s.
On Saturday, Beckmann dropped to second at the start as Juri Vips managed to take the lead at the Rettifilo. Boschung was running in sixth place after the first lap but unfortunately he was given a black and orange flag due to a front wing damage in an incident with Dan Ticktum. As a result, Boschung was forced to pit and dropped down the order. After two safety cars periods, Beckmann was running in second place and managed to fend off Théo Pourchaire for a number of laps. At the end, Beckmann lost the braking point at the Rettifilo and it resulted in a massive lock up. The German ace struggled in the closing stages of the race with tire wear and degradation and lost several places. Anyway, Beckmann still managed to keep charging Marcus Armstrong on the final lap to secure tenth place and race 2’s pole position. Boschung ended up in 14th place after his unscheduled pit stop early in the race.
In the afternoon, Beckmann fell behind Jehan Daruvala at the race 2 start. The German racer ran in second place until lap 13th when he started to struggle with tire degradation in the second half. Beckmann, fighting with the likes of Robert Shwartzman or Liam Lawson, finally took the checkered flag in fifth place and brought valuable points home. Boschung’s performance was equally solid. The Swiss driver moved into the top-ten after passing Armstrong and Boschung also moved past race 1 winner Pourchaire with an amazing maneuver on the outside with three laps to go.
Sunday’s 30-lap feature race saw a clean start with no incidents on the opening lap. Boschung and Beckmann dropped two places each but they had good prospects on the soft compound. Boschung made his mandatory pit stop on lap six but a problem changing one of the rear tires costed key seconds. Just two laps later, the safety car came out when Juri Vips stopped on track with a technical problem, just the moment when Beckmann dived into the pits for his medium-compound set of tires. It was an incident-marred race and, with nine laps to go, another safety car was deployed as Liam Lawson also stopped on the main straight. Beckmann pitted again for a fresh set of soft tires. Beckmann charged in the final three laps and was running in the top-ten when made contact with Bent Viscaal and was forced to retire. Boschung also ran in the top-ten but finally ended up in 15th place as he couldn’t fend off drivers with fresher tires.
After Monza, Campos Racing has gained another place in the teams’ standings and now sits seventh on 42 points.
The sixth round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship will take place at Sochi Autodrom in two weeks’ time.
