The F2 season truly kicks off later today as the first sprint race of the year is held at the Bahrain International Circuit.
22 drivers are looking to take that next, final step towards F1 and for drivers like Theo Pourchaire and Jack Doohan, the dream of being at the top table of motorsport is closer to reality than for many.
Both are part of F1 driver programmes, with Pourchaire in at Alfa Romeo and Doohan in at Alpine, and both are reserve drivers for their respective teams, with them experiencing F1 cars first hand last year in testing runs.
Ahead of the new F2 season, Give Me Sport asked both of them what learnings and lessons they could take from those F1 experiences into their respective F2 campaigns:
“I know Formula 1 a bit more now, since I did my first FP1 in Austin, and also the rookie test day in Abu Dhabi last year so it’s good,” said Pourchaire.
“I can learn a lot of things from the Formula 1 team, there are many more engineers, mechanics and a lot of people to work with, which is very important and also a lot of simulator work, which is very interesting.
“We can try some new parts, we can try some different setups and also for myself, I can try a lot of things.
“It’s very interesting stuff, but also your Formula 1 car is very different from F2 because of more electronics, much more horsepower, much more downforce so we cannot take everything from it but we can take a few points.”
Doohan added, meanwhile:
“Yeah, my involvement within Alpine obviously became a lot more at the latter half of last year, especially over the winter. I had the opportunity to work with every single member of the team and all the engineers and mechanics and people in the factories and you have to take all that in and really learn as much as possible.
“It is great being able to then relate that back to the Formula 2 and try and learn as much as them as possible. Obviously, things are a little bit more simple in the car in terms of what is available but it’s nice to have a lot of technical and information coming from there and being able to relate that back to F2.”
You can keep up to date with all the latest F1 news, rumours and results right here at Give Me Sport.
