Formula Challenge visited Baku for the first time last week. Here is our race report.

Race 1: Adrian Campfield qualified a strong second for the first race. In Turn 1, he made slight contact with Maguire, which compromised his exit speed. As a result, Chris rear-ended Adrian, who then hit the wall, bounced back and hit Chris again, resulting in a half-spin. After a messy T1, Adrian was in P4 but struggled with a bent suspension, which is why Chris was able to pass Adrian in the first lap, shortly followed by Leonov in Lap 2. The race went from bad to worse when Adrian spun and hit the wall in Turn 12. He had to wait until the whole grid passed him until he could continue. He pitted in the same lap and rejoined the race after a lengthy repair in P29. Unfortunately, he then clipped the wall again after Turn 6 and decided to retire from the race.

Chris Shepherd started the race one place behind Adrian in P3. As previously mentioned, he rear-ended Adrian in T1 and as a result also made contact with Wesley Stefano. After the dust settled, he found himself in fifth position, but was able to pass his teammate in the first lap. In the next laps, he closed the gap to Stefano ahead of him, but Chris wasn’t able to pass him just yet. On Lap 8, he used the MDR driver’s slipstream on the Start-Finish-Straight to pass him going into Turn 1. However, Stefano was able to come back at Chris just one lap later, passing him at the same exact spot. On lap 12, Chris made contact with the wall and was unable to fight for more positions, which meant he finished the race in P4.

Race 2: Since he retired early in the first race, Adrian started the second race from 27th place. He gained a lot of positions in the opening laps. On lap seven, he was able to pass Ziubinski on the Start-Finish-Straight for ninth place. After Dabrowski retired from the race, Adrian closed the gap to Richards in front of him. He tried to attack him on the last lap, but wasn’t able to pull off an overtaking maneuvre before the race finished. Adrian finished the race in ninth position, which means that he gained 19 places during the race. He also set the fastest lap of the race, beating his teammate by six hundreds of a second.

Chris lined up in eight position at the start. After gaining two places, he was able to overtake Early on lap three. Shortly after that, Veit spun and retired from the race, which meant that Chris was now chasing Konig and the two Red Arrow Racing cars of Jundt and Butcher. Both of the Red Arrows and Chris were able to overtake Konig in the following laps. On lap six, Jundt lifted to let his teammate pass. However, Butcher overshot the following corner and heavily crashed into the wall, severely damaging his car. This meant that Chris was now in P2, chasing Jundt. On the next lap, Jundt had a less than optimal exit out of Turn 2, enabling Chris to attack and pass the Swiss driver for the lead. However, Jundt fought back and regained the lead after passing Chris on the long Start-Finish-Straight. With three laps to go, Chris tried to pass Jundt once more. He pulled off an overtake after battling with Jundt in Turn 1 and 2. This time, he was able to build a gap to Jundt and subsequently won the second race.

Yet again, our drivers showed very good pace. Both Adrian and Chris were able to set very good lap times in qualifying and in the races. But while the pace was there, we felt we could have done better than to close the gap to Red Arrow Racing by just one point. Nevertheless, this only motived us to do even better in the next round of the 2018 Formula Challenge Season.

After the third round of the season, STAX Racing is second in the Teams’ Championship with 138 points, behind Red Arrow Racing (147 points) and in front of Royal Blue Racing (74). Adrian Campfield dropped to fourth in the Drivers’ Championship while Chris Shepherd is now in second place.

Next up will be the Spanish Round at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on April 10th, 2018. Below, you can find the broadcast and the results tables of the Azerbaijan GP.

Broadcast

Results