IMOLA, Italy, CMC – The two-month break is over, and Barbadian race car driver Zane Maloney returns to the track for the fourth round of the Formula 2 Grand Prix racing on Thursday.
The 20-year-old will be among the drivers and the teams that descend on the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari in the northern Italian city of Imola to renew their rivalry for the championship.
Maloney tops the drivers’ standings on 62 points and holds a 15-point lead over Hi-Tech Pulse Eight driver Paul Aron of Estonia, with this weekend one of seven coming in the next three months and making up half of the total races for the season – but the Caribbean man is playing it cool for now.
“I’m not focused on the championship,” he said. “I’m not focused on staying consistently in the top five – that doesn’t get you into Formula 1.
“Winning races gets you into F1, so my dream is F1, and to do that, I need to show what I’m about, win as many races, and be on pole for as many races as possible. That’s the goal for me.”
Maloney’s team, Rodin Motorsport, also leads the constructors’ championship with 78 points. They are 18 points clear of their nearest rivals, Campos Racing, which features fourth-placed driver Isack Hadjar of France and his teammate Josep Maria Martí of Spain.
“The main way to achieve the level of consistency required is to drive the car as fast as possible,” Maloney added. “The more you complicate it, the harder it gets. The more you simplify it while looking at all the details, the more you perform well.
“My job is to drive as fast as possible in every session. It’s straightforward to come to a race weekend and be a bit off in practice, and then that’s the race weekend ruined in terms of finding that time again, that pace into qualifying.
“So, the most important thing in F2 is to be on top of everything in practice as a team and as a driver, which sets you into a good qualifying.”
Maloney started the season with a double win in the sprint and feature races in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in March, and he was third in the feature race in the Australian Grand Prix in the same month.
He said he entered the season with little expectation, but there was still room for improvement after every race.
“We have been doing an excellent job so far, but there are still many times this season, even in Bahrain, where a certain lap in qualifying – when I qualified in P3 (position three), that lap wasn’t good from my side, and I knew that and tried to improve on that for the next time,” he said.
“It’s a very stacked grid. There are many great drivers on the F2 grid this year, and it’s tough. Moving on for the rest of the year will be tough, and I’m just trying to improve every day.”
F2 is the second tier of the F1 world championship, organized by the FIA, motor sport’s world governing body, and held on select circuits on the F1 Grand Prix schedule.
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