Luca Ghiotto jumped into the fight for victory after the early-race pitstops, and when the leader's tyres lost performance, he closed in on victory. He had to settle for second, but it was a strong result from fifth on the grid. It meant strong points for the championship as Ghiotto lies fifth, with rookie driver Zhou sixth in the points'.
Chinese driver Zhou had started in the top three for the second race weekend in a row, but was pushed wide at Turn 3 by another competitor on the first lap. He fought back into the top three, but during his pit stop on lap six, he lost two positions as there wasn’t a safe gap to re-join between other cars in the pits. Then an intermittent technical issue meant he dropped further down the order to 15th. A brilliant recovery from the Renault Formula 1 junior demonstrating excellent overtaking skills meant he finished sixth.
There is still one more race to go in Austria, with Zhou starting fourth on the grid and Ghiotto seventh as the championship reverses the grid for the top eight based on Saturday’s results.
Luca Ghiotto:
It's good to be back fighting where we should be, the last two weekends were the worst I had. But today the car was really great. I thought maybe we had a chance of winning at the end because I got closer to Matsushita at the end but he had better tyres than I had at the end as I had to push quite hard to catch him. This P2 feels really good. Tomorrow will be tough as the sprint race is always a little different to the feature race, but is nice to be back fighting where we should be and we will try hard to move forwards.
Guan Yu Zhou:
The race pace was super strong. It was a stressful race for me but we came back from 15th to fifth, so there are some positive things to take. A win in that race was definitely possible, or a podium was 95% there. Now onto tomorrow and we fix that. Beginning of the season was tough with the tracks I didn’t know, but now we are in Europe it has been easier and I have adapted quite quickly. We have been quick and the same pace as our experienced team-mate.
