The second of the 2021/22 V1 Malta Series took place last Monday, this time in Bahrain and it was Ryan Carabott who won yet again and maintained his perfect start to the season, as he both won the race and set the fastest lap to score the maximum number of points available.
In the qualifying, however, it was not Carabott who took pole – as Brandon Bonello set an impressive lap time on the final lap in the final part of qualifying to edge Carabott to pole by just 0.018s, with reigning champion and Ferrari driver Jake Sammut just 0.004s slower than Carabott in third place. Michael Pace and Adrian Manduca rounded out the top 5 positions in fourth and fifth respectively.
At the start of the race, Bonello got an extremely poor start from pole and dropped down to third, whereas Carabott got a strong start and took the lead going into turn 1. Meanwhile, Pace, in fourth, made a fantastic start and moved up into second place, whilst Sammut dropped from third to fourth. Down at the back, Pace’s team-mate Brendan Buhagiar in the Mercedes ran into the back of McLaren driver Christian Caruana who spun as a result.
Carabott was beautifully controlling the pace out in front and did not look to be in any danger whatsoever, whilst behind him, Bonello managed to get back past Pace for second place. At the end of lap 8, Pace, who was roughly within a second behind Bonello, elected to go into the pits first to change from soft to medium tyres, and he made an undercut attempt work, as Bonello pitted on the following lap and re-emerged behind Pace. Carabott, meanwhile, pitted a lap after Bonello and comfortably re-emerged as the leader of the front-running pack (there were some drivers who had not yet pitted and as a result inherited the lead of the race temporarily).
On lap 19, McLaren driver Simeon Nechev crashed out, and this triggered a late Safety Car. As a result, all the frontrunners elected to make a second pit stop. At this point, the order of the top 10 was: Carabott, Pace, Bonello, Manduca, Sammut, Daryl Pace, Keith Vella, Kirsten Formosa, Wayne Schembri and Brendan Buhagiar.
The Safety Car went in at the end of lap 22, and on the restart, Vella collided with Formosa and as a result spun and retired from the race. Furthermore, because of this incident, Wayne Schembri took advantage and gained two positions to move up to 7th.
Bonello got back past Michael Pace for second place at the beginning of lap 26. Meanwhile, a lap later, Formosa inadvertently ran into the back of Alpha Tauri driver Kurt Friggieri and spun him round, whilst Ferrari driver Miguel Mizzi unfortunately ended up driving into Friggieri as he had nowhere to go.
On the beginning of lap 28, Michael Pace managed to regain the position on Bonello for second place. Also, on the same lap, Caruana and Buhagiar made contact yet again and this resulted in Caruana spinning and losing out significantly. As if there was not enough drama in the last 7 laps, Sammut spun in turn 2 at the start of the final lap and dropped down from 5th down to 7th, whilst towards the very end of the race, Williams driver Chris Ciantar, who was on course to remarkably finish in the points, sadly lost control on the start/finish straight prior to taking the chequered flag and retired from the race.
However, out in front, there was no drama for Ryan Carabott, who after controlling the race perfectly thanks to impressive dominance, took the chequered flag to win for the second time in as many races. Michael Pace claimed second for the Mercedes, whilst Bonello took his second 3rd placed finish of the season in as many races. The rest of the top 10, following penalties by the game as well as through stewards’ decisions, was as follows: Manduca, Schembri, Sammut, Daryl Pace, Wayne Micallef (as he took advantage of all the late drama in the race to finish in the points), Daylziel Tabone and Kurt Friggieri.
View the full race here
Follow the full Calendar of the V1 Malta series here
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