Formula 2: Frederic Vesti wins sprint in Baku

Saturday’s sprint in Baku seemed like a continuation of yesterday’s qualifying, full of incidents, which is normal on a difficult city circuit. Especially when behind the wheel of more than two dozen cars are young racers, not all of whom exactly know the limits of their abilities, but at the same time naturally want to excel.

Almost all drivers who took the top five places in the individual Formula 2 standings started from the second five on Saturday – simply because they did well in qualifying. And only Jehan Daruvala showed the 8th fastest time yesterday, but today he started the race from 3rd position and of course would earn as many points as possible. In any case, all the other main characters had the same plans, which promised an interesting fight on the track.

The weather conditions have changed compared to Saturday: it became noticeably warmer, the air temperature approached 30 degrees, asphalt – 50, and the wind almost completely died down, which was somehow atypical for the capital of Azerbaijan, located on the Caspian coast.

Jake Hughes started from pole, but this didn’t help the British, already in the opening corners he confidently outpaced the well-accelerated Daruvala who led the race, Frederick Vesti was third and Logan Sargent was fourth. Before the start of the race, Jehan promised to act decisively, move forward and try to punch a gap on his pursuers, which he succeeded with success – after two laps he was a second and a half ahead of Hughes.

Of the rest of the top five riders in the individual standings, Marcus Armstrong was in the most favorable position, riding seventh, being chased by championship leader Felipe Drugovich, and Jüri Vips still in 9th position.

On lap 5, Jack Duane had to pit behind a new front wing, damaged at the starting flea market. Meanwhile, Vesti had nearly caught up with Hughes and started to squeeze almost every straight, hoping to take advantage of DRS in the straight from start to finish. It didn’t work on this straight, but it did on the next, and Frederik was already going into the 3rd corner ahead of the opponent, and then it was, as they say, a matter of technique.

But Hughes failed to stay in third place, he was soon overtaken by Logan Sargent and then by Richard Fershor. But by this point, Daruwala had already managed to bring the advantage to almost four seconds – and it was only eight laps!

Almost every lap one of the riders made mistakes on braking and ended up in the relegation zones in the 1st or 2nd corners, this was the case for example with Ayumu Iwasa, Amory Kordil and Roy Nissany, but so far everything has worked out just to get position losses, there were no accidents.

Hughes kept rolling backwards, on lap 9 he was ahead of Armstrong, Drugovich, Lawson, Vips, Purscher and then Dennis Hauger. For example, Jake was already outside the top ten, although he started from pole position. It could be assumed that he was somehow completely uncomfortable behind the wheel of Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dallara.

With seven laps left to the finish, the first incident that affected the nature of the race occurred: Jüri Vips was eighth, Theo Purscher overtook him, but Hauger pushed for the Frenchman and made a decisive attack for the 3rd corner, which ended for the Norwegian in the bump stop.

Dennis tried to get ahead of the opponent on the inside radius, but made an obvious brake error, locked the wheels and simply didn’t fit into the corner. The suspension on the right side of his Red Bull car was broken and the safety car ran out.

The marshals worked quite quickly and after a few laps the race resumed.

Daruvala was able to hold onto first position, but Juri Vips made a mistake in the first corner, giving several opponents the lead, and then Enzo Fittipaldi crashed him into the second corner. After that, the Est was able to continue, although he rolled back to the tail of the pack, and Fittipaldi got out.

The safety car took off again and when he returned to the pits there were only three laps left before the finish.

This time Daruvala blundered on the restart, made a braking error, which took advantage of Vesti, ahead of the Indian and led the race. But then Jehan tried to get ahead of Vershor, but in the 7th corner two cars didn’t have enough space on the track and the Dane crashed into a bump.

Berndt Maylander brought the safety car on track for the third time and when the emergency car was evacuated and the race could resume, there was only one lap to go before the finish.

At the restart, Vesti was ahead, Daruwala was attacked by Liam Lawson, but Jehan held his position, while Drugovic worked his way into 5th place, ahead of Sargent, and the whole breakaway raced to the finish. But in the second ten, the situation was far from so good.

Ralph Boschung barely fit into the 1st corner, but immediately after the apex he pushed Cem Bolukbashi’s car into the bump – the collision was very serious, the Dallara of Turkish racer Charouz Racing, bouncing off the barrier, blocked part of the track, and Kalan Williams crashed into it at full speed and Marino Sato. The equipment was seriously broken, but luckily the riders were not injured.

As this all happened at the end of the pack, the race was not stopped but only yellow flags were displayed in the first sector, so this incident didn’t stop Frederic Vesti from taking his first Formula 2 win.

Jehan Daruvala finished second and Liam Lawson also took the podium. Felipe Drugovic finished fifth, which allowed him to not only maintain his championship lead, but even strengthen his lead somewhat as his main rival, Theo Purscher, only finished seventh.

Sprint results Saturday