How binned overalls sparked a title bid

The Baku Formula 2 weekend didn't go to plan for Nyck de Vries. After a slow pitstop and being passed by Jack Aitken cost him a first win of the season, and a fourth place brought the weekend's on-track business to a disappointing conclusion, de Vries faced further woe when he learned that his entire laundry bag - containing his race suit - had been put in the bin by mistake.

It had already been a tricky beginning to the season after he had been dropped from the McLaren driver-development programme. Three drivers ahead of him were shaping up to be faster packages in 2019; perhaps the erroneous destination of his laundry had become a metaphor for his championship campaign.

What the 24-year-old Dutchman needed was some luck. A reset and a reconnect with his innate ability, which he hasn't always combined with consistency.

A new pair of overalls seemed to be a good place to start, but initially he would have to borrow a set to continue his adventure, rather in the style of '70s TV character Mr Benn. The man to help a friend in need, and to step into the role of the fez-wearing shopkeeper, was ART Formula 3 driver David Beckmann, who produced a set of spares for his stablemate.

Dressed in overalls featuring Beckmann's sponsors - and the stripes of the German flag, an incongruous sight on a Dutchman's shoulders - de Vries set about looking for a turnaround in Spain, and found it.

"I told Dave he is not getting them back," de Vries says of Beckmann's overalls. "He wants to try them to see how they are, if they bring him some luck!"

By "luck", de Vries is referring to the run of success he achieved in his second-hand garb.

After struggling to get into the right window of the F2 car's tricky combination of set-up and tyre performance/wear, he took seventh in the opening race at Barcelona, but then his car came alive and he won Sunday's sprint race.

Arms aloft, he celebrated with the Dutch national anthem, the Dutch flag behind him on the big screen, and German flags on his race suit.

De Vries says there is more to that turnaround than it seemed from the outside. It wasn't like the win kickstarted his season, he argues. He believed the revival was already under way before then.

"I used to be very superstitious, but I force myself not to be because you're just making your own life difficult" Nyck de Vries

"We were leading in Baku, before the pitstop," proffers de Vries. "Perhaps Barcelona race one was a difficult one, but I think it's too easy to judge from the outside and say, 'You struggled at the start of the year'.

"Perhaps the results weren't everything we wanted or expected after winter testing, but when you're in that moment with a team you look at it differently, you have a lot more information.

"Generally speaking I'm very happy with the atmosphere and approach inside the team, the whole environment. We work as a team. I'm very happy and grateful for that. I don't like to take conclusions so soon, we just need to do the best possible job together and it was good today, but tomorrow is a new day."

That's been de Vries' approach for as long as I've been covering Formula 2. Every time I ask him about momentum, about a particular win being important to a championship bid, the answer is always a variation of: "I don't mean to be cliche, but I don't think about the championship too much and we take it day by day."

It took until Paul Ricard last weekend for the form transformation to be complete on paper as he moved past Williams Formula 1 junior Nicholas Latifi into the points lead. It was an impressive turnaround given de Vries contested a motor racing event diametrically opposite to F2 - the Le Mans 24 Hours - the weekend before and crashed out heavily.

He insists that taking the F2 points lead "doesn't make me happy today", adding "there's still a super-long way to go, we take it day by day, step by step and tomorrow is a new race".

After that Barcelona win, de Vries made it back-to-back glory by triumphing in one of the most important events of the season - the Monaco feature race that he'd been robbed of winning the year before when he was involved in a bizarre pitlane crash with Alex Albon. Then a fifth place followed in the sprint on the streets. Two wins, a fifth and a seventh. Not bad going for the borrowed suit.

But by Ricard, de Vries had a new racesuit of his own ready for use. Was he worried that returning the overalls to Beckmann and donning his new ones would inspire a change of karma?

"I used to be very superstitious, but I force myself not to be because you're just making your own life difficult," says de Vries.

"The thing is, when you're in sports and you're feeling pressure, superstitions give you security. You stick with things you know. It adds pressure but removes stress, if that makes sense. You then don't have it and you get even more worried. I try not to think about it."

It turned out it wasn't a problem. After failing to "extract the maximum out of the package" in qualifying, de Vries leapt from fourth to the lead at the start of race one and was phenomenal.

He lost the lead to an undercut from Aitken - as he had in Baku - but instead of Aitken disappearing, de Vries retook the spot on his out-lap with a brilliant move at Turn 8. From there, the hard work was done.

As he rightly points out, there's a long way to go. Latifi has been ultra-consistent for the reputable DAMS team, while Aitken is thirsty after a nightmare season with ART the year before. McLaren junior Sergio Sette Camara is set to come on strong after a tricky start to the season, while Luca Ghiotto has described his season so far as a "comedy film", finding new and interesting ways - not always his own fault - to lose strong results.

The current F2 double-header - with the Red Bull Ring coming this weekend - followed quickly by Silverstone is where George Russell stamped his authority on the championship last year. De Vries won't be the only one aiming to replicate that, and the championship is still wide open with 10 races gone and 14 remaining. But a third of the way through that early summer trio of events, de Vries has set himself up as F2's man to beat.

The F2 rookies F1 should be watching closely

While last year F2 had a crop of three future F1 drivers - Russell, Lando Norris and Albon - on arguably the best grid the series will ever have, that situation was an outlier. A new car meant the rookies weren't playing catch-up as much as they could have been, and the series' veterans lost the benefit of experience they had in the previous car.

In 2019 there are a number of strong drivers in their second year in the car and, unsurprisingly, they are positioned at the top of the order. But two rookies in particular are making waves.

In a time where, coincidentally, its future driver line-up is already being talked about, both of those rookies belong to the Renault F1 team.

Chinese driver Guan Yu Zhou is an ideal contender for F1, a young and talented driver with the ability to do the business on track while giving the championship the key to open the door to the world's most valuable economy.

For those reasons, it's only a matter of time before Zhou reaches F1 - likely at the end of his two-year F2 programme with top squad Virtuosi Racing. He also has the benefit of the rapid and experienced Ghiotto as his team-mate in a line-up only challenged by DAMS's.

It was a relatively slow start for Zhou, understandably given he was visiting tracks he hadn't before, but as soon as F2 reached familiar stomping ground at Barcelona, the 20-year old was on the podium, and he hasn't failed to visit it in the following two rounds either. He lies fifth in the championship - the top rookie in the series.

The second rookie driver challenging the odds is reigning GP3 Series champion Anthoine Hubert. His seventh in the championship may not seem exceptional given he arrived on the grid having won F2's former feeder series, but his position at this point is still a surprise for a number of reasons.

Zhou arguably only hasn't won a sprint race because he's been finishing too high in the feature races to benefit from reversed grids

Until his title in GP3 last year, Hubert had never been the standout driver in any car-racing championship. F3/GP3 contemporaries such as Russell and Lance Stroll had accelerated away to F1 without him.

Pair that with the fact that Hubert joined the team that finished last in F2 last year - Arden - and I really didn't have much hope for the likeable 22-year-old Frenchman.

But his calm and thorough approach has proved a revelation in F2, and he has married that to improving his driving, too. While the team has moved forward thanks to engineering help from HWA, its other driver, Tatiana Calderon, is yet to score points and is last in the standings. She has suffered bad luck, but Hubert's two wins prove he is operating at a phenomenal level in comparison.

He has only finished outside of the top 10 once, with 11th in Baku - where he was fighting higher up the order before making a mistake. Arguably the highlight was his debut F2 race in which he drove from 11th to fourth, pitting and managing his tyres without radio contact with the team after it had broken.

After qualifying 15th at Paul Ricard following 18th place in practice, his analytical approach with the team was in the shop window and he worked back to eighth in the feature race to score pole for the reversed-grid race, which he won.

"That's the best thing, after a bad practice and a bad quali, we restarted and we leave the weekend with 19 points and a win, so I'm really happy with that," Hubert tells Autosport.

"I know we still have to work on many things - quali, pitstops, those are the two main things to work on.

"Winning here is really special. Monaco [where he also won the sprint race] was good, but this is more special.

"We know where we need to work and we will try to do a step for Austria this week and see where that brings us."

Zhou has a fantastic car underneath him and arguably only hasn't won a sprint race because he's been finishing too high in the feature races to have a realistic chance to benefit from reversed grids. Conversely, Hubert's less than ideal package is being supplemented by his silky-smooth approach and ability to caress the Pirelli tyres to the end of the race.

Hubert's adjacent champion last year, with GP3 being on the same level as European F3 in 2018, was Mick Schumacher. Zhou and Hubert look even more impressive compared to the most hyped junior single-seater driver in the world, probably in history.

Schumacher lies 15th in the points in a car that was regularly fighting for wins and poles in de Vries' hands last season. He also beat Zhou - his then team-mate - in F3 last year, but trails heavily this season.

There's no doubt that Hubert and Zhou are excelling, week in and week out, and could certainly end this season in the top five in the championship ahead of potential title attempts in 2020. They are good friends and will be seeing more of each other as Hubert spends more time at Enstone, a consequence of his increased role with Renault for '19.

Both could be in a current F1 car at some point this year, and if they maintain form, have strong futures ahead.