Race 2 triumph for Mathilda Paatz: The rookie F1 Academy racer finishes on top of the podium, converting a P4 start into a maiden win at the Canadian grand-prix. Backed by the Aramco Aston Martin F1 Team, Paatz mentioned how hard the team worked to get to this point in her post-victory speech and thanked Prema Racing for their support as well.
Her first win comes immediately after achieving her maiden podium, a P3 in the opening race of the same weekend, and leaves Paatz rightfully estatic. Combined, she has now already scored 25 points this weekend and finds herself in third in the overall standings. It is a full circle moment for the German racer, who made her F1 Academy debut at the very same track in Montréal just a year ago!
A hard fought battle for victory
The reverse grid race, or race 2, is a special, shorter format and consisted of only 13 laps. The circuit Gilles-Villeneuve once again proved that the action piled into those 13 laps rivals a full race easily. The top three positions were not clear all the way from the beginning to the finish line – and across it. Race 2 started with rookie Kaylee Countryman on reverse pole, Racing Bull’s driver Rafaela Ferreira behind her. Countryman’s start did not hold up to Ferreira’s, who made an early lunge and took first position after rocketing of the line.
The Brazilian held onto it throughout two safety car restarts and tricky conditions and crossed the finish line first, but got handed a five second time penalty as her blitzing getaway was classified a false start. This dropped her from P1 down to P10 in an ultimately dissapointing end to her race, where she will have to take her racecraft and calmness under pressure as positive encouragment of an otherwise well-managed race. Making the move on Countryman when it counted and keeping it clean, Paatz inherited the win from Ferreira.
Heartbreak continues for Larsen
In a unexpected twist of action, Ferrari’s Alba Larsen experienced all the highs and lows of racing in race 2. Originally starting P3, lap 7 saw Larsen making contact with Red Bull’s Alisha Palmowski, with both drivers narrowly escaping significant damage. Finding trouble on the road Larsen fell back, but fought her way up right in the very end. She bravely went side-by-side with Countryman and made it stick into the last corners. Her rather aggressive approach ended up with her in second, finally celebrating a maiden podium in the series after a disastrous opening weekend in Shanghai.
Sharing the podium with Paatz and Countryman must have felt like a sweet, long-awaited compensation, but ended abruptly around four hours later when she got hit with a 5-second post-race penalty. It demoted her from 2nd to eleventh, reshuffling the order as follows: P1 Paatz, P2 Countryman and P3 for Payton Westcott, the Mercedes driver who started in seventh and drove an impressively clean and determined race 2.
Chaos across the grid
Even outside of the podium positions, race 2 was anything other than calm. Emma Felbermayr, championship leader coming into this weekend, spun out and dropped to the back of the field for the second time this weekend. Scoring only on point each race, she will be looking to recover some big points in the feature race where she starts from fourth. Her closest rival for the title right now is Alisha Palmowski, who ended race 2 in twelfth position.
During her close call with Larsen earlier, Palmoswki was very late on the breaks and locked up, going over grass to stay out of the wall. Despite not having to pit for damage, Palmowskis race ended when she made contact with Campos teammate Megan Bruce, who managed to stay on track. Nina Gademan also fell victim to this commotion, as her attempt to avoid the pair saw her ending up in the wall as well. Ava Dobson had a similiar unlucky DNF to add to the tally.
For both McLaren backed drivers, Lloyd and Stevens, the weekend in Canada is shaping up to be difficult. After a problem in quali, Ella Lloyd started P16 and seemed right on pace, setting an early fastest lap. However, the race proved to be tricky: Contact with Robertson, whose race came to an end on lap 2, effectively bumped Lloyd down from a hard fought P7 to a P13 post-race. Ella Stevens on the other side got handed a painful stop-and-go penalty after a starting procedure infringement on the first safety car restart and made things worse by speeding into the pitlane to serve it. She got handed another penalty for that, keeping her way out of the points in the end.
Jade Jaquet’s 5 second time penalty for the same thing, as well as wildcard Autumn Fisher’s extra five seconds left both of them at the back of the grid as well and round out what was an action packed race 2 in Montréal! With an extremely close drivers standing right now, all eyes are on the final feature race later on.
