An absolute heartbreaker, but not a back-breaker for Weug’s championship aspirations
You’ll never see someone’s championship aspirations take a more shocking, heartbreaking hit than the one F1 Academy driver Maya Weug’s took on Friday night.
F1 Academy — the all-female single-seater series — is the lone support series for this weekend’s Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend, and it started in absolutely insane fashion.
The series is racing twice in Las Vegas, which serves as the season finale. Going into the race, the championship was between Mercedes driver Doriane Pin and Ferrari driver Weug, with Pin leading by 9 points.
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For the first race of the weekend, Weug started the race in P4, with Pin starting just behind her in P5.
Due to the wet conditions, the formation laps started behind the safety car. But when the field pulled away, driver Emma Felbermayr remained stationary in P2 and had to retire with a clutch issue.
So the formation laps went on with Weug and Pin sliding up to P3 and P4, respectively.
The plan was for a rolling start after three formation laps, when something absolutely shocking happened as Weug was trying to get her tires warm for the start.
It looked like Tina Hausmann in the Aston Martin-liveried car accelerated and then hit the brakes — again, perhaps to get more heat in her tires — and that caught out Weug.
Whatever the cause was, both of their races were over.
Worse yet for Weug, Pin had now moved into P2 before the race had even gotten underway, giving her a golden opportunity to extend her championship lead.
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Once the race got underway, Pin passed her Prema Racing teammate, polesitter Nina Gademan, and took the win.
This means that Pin will enter Saturday’s season finale with a 20-point lead over Weug.
That’s not insurmountable, but it will be very tough.
However, in Weug’s favor, anything can happen in these races.
