Formula 2: Saturday Sprint won by Ayumu Iwasa

Saturday’s sprint was started from pole position by Jake Crawford, an American rider from the Hitech team, who finished tenth in qualifying yesterday. He kept the lead at the start of the race, but Ayumu Iwasa broke through from fourth to second, pushing Ralph Boschung and Kush Maini aside. Then the Japanese DAMS rider immediately tried to attack the leader and at the very start of the second lap managed to get ahead of Crawford.

However, the race was soon neutralized after a spin by Zane Maloney and a safety car came onto the track for the marshals to recover the stalled Carlin from the Barbadian debutant.

On lap five the track battle resumed, on the restart Boschung managed to get ahead of Crawford, and Maini rolled back to 6th position, passing Jehan Daruwala and Oliver Birman in front. And soon the Indian Maini was overtaken by Victor Marten, the winner of yesterday’s qualifying.

Iwasa was in the lead, but Boschung was only half a second off his car and must have dreamed of fighting for victory. Meanwhile, Maini missed Theo Purscher, after which the leader of the individual classification, probably inspired by the first success, tried to brake for Marten before the 1st corner. However, the leader of the individual classification and Alfa Romeo F1’s reserve driver clearly overestimated his abilities and the car’s speed, simply knocking Birman off the track. The contact between the cars was quite hard and both stopped at the curb with a broken suspension.

The safety car came out again and the pack had to do several laps in the pit lane to avoid the crash site. Purscher was the first to approach Birman to apologize – as far as one could tell from his expressive gestures, he did so sincerely.

The restart was given on the 10th lap, Iwasa kept the lead, but Marten got ahead of Crawford with a deft maneuver and took 4th position from him. Soon Crawford got ahead of Maini.

But on the next lap a curious episode occurred: Maini counter-attacked the American, their cars ran side by side for some time and at that point Jack Duane tried to get ahead of both! The idea was daring, but the Australian was unable to realize it. But Kush managed to regain 5th position.

Jehan Daruvala got into a fight with Ralph Boschung, the duel was interesting, it took several turns, but the Swiss managed to stay in 2nd position. But not for long: already in the next, 13th lap, Daruvala was able to get the job done, after which he chased the leader.

On lap 14, Marten joined the slipstream behind Boschung’s car and calmly passed him into the first corner – the reigning Formula 3 champion had already made it into the top three, although he started tenth.

On lap 15 Daruvala tried to get ahead of Iwasa with a similar maneuver but unlike Marten he wanted to do it along the outer radius and as a result he only had to cut the 2nd corner on the side of the road and turn back to position. Marten took advantage of this and began to actively put pressure on Indian driver MP Motorsport. Jehan tried to get away and at the same time stay ahead of Iwasa, but nothing came of it: at the beginning of the 17th lap, Viktor outsmarted him and finished in second place.

There were still two rounds to go and Marten naturally wanted to get ahead of Iwasa to take the first win of the season. As he prepared an attack, the second half of the top ten saw active positional battle. Frederick Vesti first defeated Jack Duane, then Jake Crawford to move into 6th position. The American, of course, tried to resist, but Vesti had even more experience, so he won.

Marten literally chased Iwasa close on the last lap, their cars were only a few tenths apart, but in the closing sectors the Japanese added and brought the gap to almost a second, so he was the first to take the black and white checkered saw flag. This is the Japanese driver’s third win from the Red Bull youth program in Formula 2, confirming both his speed and markedly increased skill.

Literally in the last meters of the distance, Dennis Hauger managed to stay ahead of Crawford in the battle for 8th place: his car crossed the finish line just 0.230 seconds earlier.

In general, Saturday’s race turned out to be very interesting, the battle was going on throughout the pack, so the fans rejoiced at the impetuous overtaking maneuvers and saw many sharp moments.

Ayumu Iwasa climbed to the top step of the podium, but Victor Marten had a very competitive race and took 2nd place, with third going to Jehan Daruwala. In addition, the championship leader changed, which was difficult to foresee. Theo Purscher started the season confidently, but fell out of the race today due to his own mistake and failed to score any points. At the same time, Ralph Boschung topped up his piggy bank for five bonus points, which depend on 4th place in Saturday’s sprint, putting him at the top of the personal classification.

Results in progress…