Boya: ‘Speed is there’ after Sakhir fightback but ‘Qualifying must improve’

It was a Birthday drive to remember for Mari Boya, as he surged through the pack from P20 on the grid to finish eighth in the Sakhir Feature Race.

The Campos Racing driver suffered a setback in Qualifying, unable to secure a top 12 starting position he felt was well within his grasp.

A fired-up performance on Sunday however was a strong note to end a disappointing weekend on. After stepping out of the car, Boya said Round 2 had been a tough one to take, but that he was pleased with the team’s work and overall pace.

“It’s hard to say it but I’m not fully happy,” he admitted. “In testing, we showed incredible pace over one lap. In Qualifying, I was expecting to be fighting for everything. But this is racing, sometimes things don’t go according to plan or as you deserve.

“All the team is working really hard for me, and I feel incredible support from everyone. But Qualifying wasn’t on our side, and we needed to recover. The pace is there for sure, and once again we showed it.

Despite having to battle his way past rivals and racing in the dirty air of cars ahead, the Spaniard’s race pace was competitive with those fighting at the front.

At one stage, Boya was matching laptimes of race leader Rafael Câmara, a clear indication of what the Campos driver had been capable of during the event.

He says that it is a positive, and with several quick-fire rounds coming up, he’s hoping for better Friday results to show what he and the team can do at the front.

READ MORE: FEATURE RACE: Câmara dominates to take second victory of the season in Sakhir

“That’s the only thing (we can take) from the weekend – we did three days of testing here when the temperatures were much lower than in the race weekend. Conditions change and we had little time to adapt and put everything together.

“I didn’t have a really clean race because I had to use up the tyre, but the pace was still much more than the cars in front. I’m just asking for Imola to be a clean Qualifying, in the top 10. I won’t ask for anymore, because we don’t need to be top five to be fighting for the win, the pace is super strong.

“We didn’t do it for Qualifying but at least we learned and showed good speed in the race. We know what we need to work on, and the Championship is still long. We have a super strong package to fight for everything.”

Reflecting on the weekend, Boya picked out his favourite overtake as the one that earned him P8, going past Bruno del Pino of MP Motorsport to secure four points to open his account in 2025.

Formula 3 now has a break in the season before reconvening for Round 3 at Imola next month. The Campos driver says he’ll be taking the time to relax and reset ahead of the next race weekend, one he hopes will be a return to the sharp end of the grid.

“For sure, the last one for P8. I did a double overtake. It was fun to finish the race, the most special I would say.

“I’ll be relaxing a bit, training as I always do and preparing with the team for these next three races where it will be super important to be at the front.”