F2: Boschung takes first win on 96th attempt

Saturday’s sprint in Bahrain was started from pole position by Ralph Boschung, a very experienced Campos rider. This is the seventh season in Formula 2 for the 25-year-old Swiss and his 96th start in the youth series, which is considered something of a record.

In addition, he spent most of these races as part of the Spanish team, which has not been able to achieve much success in recent years, so Ralph naturally had a fighting spirit today and he wanted to make the most of the favorable situation. He set the 10th fastest time in qualifying yesterday and as F2 uses a partially reversed starting order, Ralph’s car took pole position today.

His neighbors on the grid were interesting: Czech Roman Stanek, the Trident driver, started the race from the front row, the car of Arthur Leclerc, another F2 debutant, started in third place, Ayumu Iwasa, the teammate of the Frenchman on the DAMS team, started from fourth.

As everyone started their warm-up lap, Charouz’s American rookie Brad Benavidez didn’t start right away, meaning he had to roll all the way to the back of the field.

When the traffic lights went out, Boschung was able to hold on to first position and immediately took the lead. Leclerc and Iwasa had an excellent start – the Japanese first worked his way up to third position and then surpassed his partner.

By the second lap, Theo Purscher, the winner of yesterday’s qualifying, had already gained three positions and was running seventh and sixth after one more lap. Meanwhile, Boschung reduced Iwasa’s gap to almost a second and a half and was no longer threatened by rival attacks with DRS.

On the third lap, Purscher was ahead of Dennis Hauger and moved up to fifth position, and Victor Marten managed to overtake Leclerc in a fierce battle. By the way, all of them have already left Stanek, who, as we remember, started second, and by the fifth round he was at the end of the top ten.

It was soon revealed that Leclerc and Isaac Hadjar were handed a 10-second Stop & Go penalty for violating the starting procedure – their mechanics played with the cars too long and left the field too late.

After six laps, Ralf Boschung remained in the lead, although his lead was reduced to one second as Iwasa picked up the pace and accelerated a bit. Purscher was already fourth and was in the process of overtaking Marten, his ART teammate. However, last year’s Formula 3 champion would not tolerate this, he noticeably improved and by the 9th lap he was ahead of Iwasa in the battle for second place.

Now Purscher also added, clearly intending to follow his partner’s lead, and after one lap he made it through DRS and later braking into Turn 1.

Worth noting is Jack Duane’s botched tactics, regarded as one of the favorites of the season, but things are clearly not going well for the Australian this weekend. He started 17th and unlike most of his rivals he favored hard tyres, remaining in the same distant position about halfway through the distance.

On lap 12, Iwasa retook his position from Marten and moved back into second, but the Frenchman was not left behind, although it was felt that his rubber was already beginning to lose speed. On lap 13, Victor was still able to regain his position, Ayumu tried to recover and their duel went on for several turns, but it all ended with Marten staying ahead.

But at one point Pursher was ahead of Iwasu, but could not hold on to third position and had to give way to the Japanese, after which Hauger also overtook him. It turns out that the efforts were in vain, and Theo again dropped to 4th position.

Further events developed even more interesting: Hauger attacked and was ahead of Iwasu, after which Pursher also overtook the Japanese. But Ayumu would not give in without a fight, counterattacked and won back the position.

With seven laps to go, the top five looked like this: Boschung was in the lead, bringing the lead to almost four seconds. Next came Martin, Hauger, Iwasa and Purscher.

The stewards have ruled that Jack Crawford, the American debutant of Hitech, and Amaury Kordil, Belgian Virtuosi driver, will be penalized an extra five seconds for trespassing.

And Ralph Boschung raced to his first Formula 2 victory: surprisingly, he had never climbed to the top step of the podium in the previous six years in this series, but today he had to correct this omission.

With three laps to go, Enzo Fittipaldi was able to get ahead of Stanek and move up to 8th position, so the Brazilian opened the scoring with earned points in race one.

Shortly before the end of the sprint, Theo Purscher and Jehan Daruvala started an interesting battle on the track, which the Frenchman attacked stubbornly, but he fought back no less stubbornly.

On the penultimate lap, Hauger almost overtook Victor Marten, but the Formula 2 novice tried to stay in second place – apparently, despite his lack of experience, he knows how to work with rubber and was able to save some of his raw material until the end of the match.

However, Dennis’ cunning should not be underestimated, and in the last round he still waited for a good moment, launched a decisive attack and was ahead of his opponent.

Ralph Boschung was the first to see the black and white checkered flag, much to the delight of the Campos team, and he himself simply couldn’t contain his emotions as he thanked his colleagues for preparing a good car. By the way, he “brought” almost 11 seconds to his rivals, which is not quite typical for Formula 2, where everyone uses the same technique.

Dennis Hauger took second place, Victor Marten finished third, which is very good for a debutant. Fourth place was taken by Ayumu Iwasa and fifth by Theo Purscher, who, despite the worn tyres, managed to fend off all of Daruwala’s attacks.

Formally, Boschung became the leader of the individual classification after the sprint, but this will most likely not last long, as he will only start tenth tomorrow. However, inspired by today’s success, Ralph could well show a good result. And the main contender for victory must of course be regarded as Purscher, who warmed up well today and will not miss his target from pole position on Sunday.

Sprint results