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First F2 Win for Semprini

11.08.2014 - Monty Semprini has a reason to party after attaining his first career F2 race win in the last race of the year at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. On a track that has been good to Monty in the past, the Canadian did need a little luck to be first to the checquered flag but showed strong pace all weekend.

"Shagadelic, yeah baby yeah!" he yelled when stepping out of the car and removing his lipstick helmet before disco dancing around the front wing and leaning down to kiss the nose of his machine.

"It's been two full years in F2 with lots of podiums but no victories," he said. "It's just awesome to shoehorn the first win in before the end of the year."

Starting from third on the grid he quickly dropped back of the leaders Rui B Martins and Lubos Kubka by three or four tenths per lap while holding off fellow Canadians Max Vanderpuije and Sergio Swampish, but luck would step in as just nearing the wave of pitstops Martins slowed by three seconds per lap on badly worn tyres. As everyone else pitted Martins inexplicably didn't. Semprini passed him briefly before pitting himself on lap 22 of the scheduled 39. On the very next lap Martins blew a tyre in turn 18 and retired from the race and as the only driver capable of mathematically catching Kubka in the title race, sealed the deal for the Czech.

After a safety car period to pick up the bits of delaminated rubber from Rui B's tyre carcass, race order was Kubka, Semprini, Vanderpuije, Swampish and Boaz Kolbasz with Swampish slipping into third shortly before slipping back to sixth with an off track moment. Semprini had widened a gap back to Max but could not quite keep up with leader Kubka just over two seconds ahead.

Then with four laps remaining fortune smiled on Monty one more time when Kubka lost control exiting turn 2 coming to rest against the barrier. Semprini maintained the four second advantage to Vanderpuije the rest of the way to the finish with the Hungarian Kolbasz taking third place.

"We didn't have the tyre wear problems that everyone else seemed to have. Maybe that's why they were a bit quicker at the start," Semprini explained. "The car was fabulous and this track brings out the best in me."

Donning the stetson hat given to the finalists and drowning everyone around in bubbly, Monty dragged all the grid girls onto the podium and started a conga line back down to the paddock.

With DNFs from both Kubka and Martins, they both held positions one-two in the championship on 305 and 297 points respectively. Kolbasz took the third place trophy with 284 points leaving Semprini a rather distant fourth on 205 and Vanderpuije fifth on 166.

https://www.myracingcareer.com/en/report/9-539/