If last season did not ultimately go to plan for Ryan Carabott, he evidently seems determined to put things right this year – as he took victory in Belgium in last Monday’s race to make it seven wins out of nine this season and extend his lead at the top of the Championship. Adrian Manduca drove an impressive race to take second once again, whilst Brandon Bonello bounced back after a couple of disappointing races to take a podium finish once again.
In a qualifying that began dry, turned wet and ended up dry again, Ryan Carabott took pole position at the last moment of qualifying with an impressive lap under enormous pressure, having had 2 flying laps previously deleted for exceeding track limits, which certainly demonstrated why he has been performing so strongly during this season. Reigning champion and current Ferrari driver Jake Sammut qualified in second, whilst Adrian Manduca started the race in third place.
At the start of the race, Carabott got away impressively well from pole, however, Sammut got an inferior getaway in second place, and coupled with Manduca getting a strong start from the third spot, meant that Manduca overtook Sammut for second at the start of the race. Further back, though, there were all sorts of carnage with several drivers suffering wing damage and needing to come into the pits for repairs at the end of the opening lap.
A lap later, going up the famous Eau Rouge hill on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, both Jamie Zahra in the Williams and Daryl Pace in the Haas lost control and crashed out of the race, demonstrating how unforgiving this circuit can be when a driver makes a mistake. Further backing up this point of how the circuit is extremely unforgiving towards drivers who make errors, on lap 4, Alpine driver Keith Muscat crashed out and this led to the Safety Car (SC) being deployed.
This SC led to several drivers making pit stops to change their tyres, given the reduced time loss from making a pitstop under SC conditions, including all the frontrunners, with the field eventually being bunched up as a result. One of the only drivers who elected not to pit during the SC was Alfa Romeo driver Carl Inguanez, and the two McLaren drivers as well as Kurt Friggieri re-emerged on track behind him following their pitstops. During the SC, in what was an extremely bizarre, McLaren driver Simeon Nechev crashed into the back of Christian Caruana who spun out of the race going up Eau Rouge as a result, whilst he overtook several cars who should not have been overtaken as a result.
The SC came in at the end of lap 7, and on the restart, Friggieri swiftly got past Inguanez for sixth place, whilst, because of the fact he bizarrely overtook cars under the SC, Nechev did not defend his position at all and easily let Sammut and Bonello through for 3rd and 4th place respectively.
The unforgiving track continued to see more mistakes from drivers, as Williams driver Chris Ciantar lost control going up the Eau Rouge hill, whilst on lap 11, Wayne Schembri also lost control of his car going into turn 15, and shortly after, Chris Ciantar also had an incident which put him out of the race. As a result, the SC was deployed for the second time in the race.
As a result of the SC being deployed, Bonello took the opportunity to pit for a second time and put on a fresh set of soft tyres. In addition to Bonello, most drivers directly outside the points-scoring positions also used this SC period to make another tyre change. As a result of making his pit stop, Bonello dropped down to 8th place given that cars previously behind him elected not to pit.
The SC then came in at the end of lap 13, and Bonello swiftly got back past Inguanez for 7th, and by the beginning of lap 15 had already moved back up into 5th place as he got back past both Mercedes driver Michael Pace and Nechev in the McLaren. On the following lap, Bonello had already recovered back up to 4th place as he got past Friggieri, demonstrating his clear pace advantage but also an impressive efficiency in getting back past cars to whom he gave up track position to.
Bonello then swiftly got past Sammut for 3rd, however, eventually, his pace advantage wore off and, although he closed up considerably to Manduca in 2nd, he could not execute a pass and had to settle for a 3rd place finish, which was his best result since the Monaco race this season, with Manduca taking 2nd. Out in front, there was simply no stopping Carabott who led the whole race from start to finish with a brilliantly controlled drive to make it 7 wins out of 9 this season. The rest of the top 10 finished as follows: Sammut, Pace, Friggieri, Nechev, Mercedes driver Brendan Buhagiar, Alpha Tauri driver Wayne Micallef and Haas driver Kirsten Formosa.
A comment from Ryan Caraboot himself
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