Formula 2: Berman wins for the second time in a row

Sunday’s Formula 2 race in Baku took place in the morning, when temperatures had not yet reached the daily maximum, so the asphalt surface of the city circuit had not yet fully warmed up. The air temperature barely rose above 20 degrees, the tracks did not reach 30 and the weather could not be called sunny.

All this made it difficult for the riders to prepare tires, because on Saturday, not only in F2, but also in Formula 1, incidents occurred during sprints due to cold tires.

17-year-old Briton Oliver Berman, a Prema driver and a student of the Ferrari Racing Academy, started from pole position for the first time in his career and will not make his debut in this series until 2023. Next to him on the front row was the car of Enzo Fittipaldi, the Brazilian Carlin driver.

Berman got off to a great start, kept the lead and the first corners after the start were surprisingly calm. The riders must have received strict instructions from their teams to take into account yesterday’s mistakes and not to try to show excessive sprinting during the first of the distance’s 29 laps.

Theo Purscher, who started third for ART, overtook Fittipaldi on the second lap, first approaching the Carlin on the long straight and then overtook him at the end of the first sector. And at the end of the circle, calmly, thanks to the slipstream and the DRS system, he overtook Berman and led the race. Now Purscher would have to get enough distance from the opponent to avoid counterattacking at the end of the next lap in the straight, but Theo couldn’t.

Berman moved faster, so he retook the first position and quickly began to build the advantage, allowing him to move more than a second off Purscher in just one lap. And at the same time show the best lap time in this leg of the race.

The ART team instructed Purcher to raise, he tried to follow the instruction, but Berman also added so he could hold the interval for more than a second, preventing the Frenchman from using DRS.

On the sixth lap the first mandatory pit stops started, but from the top five only Frederic Vesti went for fresh tyres, allowing Victor Marten to move up to 4th position. However, Fittipaldi and Marten spun through the circle into the pit lane. After one more lap, the Prema team decided to call Berman to the pits, and Pursher followed him. But the Italian team worked well and smoothly, changing tyres, and Oliver was the first to get back on track in 4th.

Yellow flags appeared on the track on lap 9, after which the virtual safety car mode was introduced. This was because American Ben Benavidez’s car stopped on the track. At first he didn’t fit into Turn 4 and drove into the relegation zone, but when he tried to turn around he somehow clumsily did so, after which the car buried itself in a barrier and came to a stop.

Yesterday, Ben also crashed his car on a difficult city road – in general, the Baku weekend was clearly not a success for him.

On lap 11, the track battle resumed and at that time Isaac Hajjar, the French driver from Hitech, was in the lead, Ayumu Iwasa, the leader of the individual classification, was second, but both were not yet in the pits. Admittedly, the stewards saw some kind of violation in the actions of the Japanese during the VSC regime, and soon announced that Ayumu was given a 5-second penalty.

On lap 13, Jehan Daruvala passed Jack Crawford on the straight to move up to 11th position, but on the next lap the Indian driver made a mistake trying to attack Zayn Maloney, then had to use the safety zone in turn 1. – because of this, Daruwala, of course, lost several positions.

In addition, it seemed to the stewards that he was returning to the track in an unsafe manner, and they began to investigate this episode.

Frederik Vesti acted more thoughtfully, so his attack on Kusha Maini at the end of the start-finish line was quite successful and the Dane moved up to 7th position.

The race crossed the equator, but Hajar and Iwasa remained in the first two positions and tried to delay the moment of the mandatory pit stop as much as possible in order to show good speed on the last part of the distance due to soft tires, but Berman caught up with them quickly.

Meanwhile, the stewards decided to fine Daruwala – he received a 10-second penalty. On video replay it was clear that Jehan unsuccessfully attacked Maloney, almost crashing into his car from behind, but dodged at the last minute, ending up in the relegation zone before taxiing onto the track just in front of Richard Vershore, and had to make a sharp left turn to avoid a collision.

There were only eight laps to go to the finish, but Hajar and Iwasa still remained on track on the same tires they started on, and this tactic raised doubts as Berman was already third in just 8.5 seconds, on his Purscher’s turn for almost three seconds. Accordingly, after the mandatory pit stop, Isaac and Ayumu had to roll back to the end of the top ten at best. In addition, Iwasa was fined.

As a matter of fact, Fittipaldi has already come quite close to Purscher and could well attack him and try to take a potential second place away from him. On lap 24, Enzo really went on the attack, but Theo fended off the first attack, but the Brazilian showed perseverance and beautifully outclassed his opponent in the 4th turn.

Hadjar pitted with just four laps to go and returned to the track in 9th. Iwasa turned into the pit lane even later, only on the 26th lap, after which he finished 14th. However, he still had nothing to lose.

Thus Berman moved back into first position, Fittipaldi was four seconds behind and Purscher tried to put pressure on him, clearly hoping he would recover in the closing laps, which would make sense. However, Enzo added and moved away from Theo after the second break, respectively, Purscher was no longer able to use DRS. But his compatriot, Victor Martin, was already closing in on the Frenchman.

By the way, Hajar showed the best lap time on fresh soft tires and took it away from the race leader.

The last lap was relatively uneventful, the positions within the top five remained unchanged: Oliver Berman took a landslide victory, his second already this weekend, and even took pole in Friday’s qualifying, so the British debutant could be congratulated on his first real success in Formula 2.

Second place was Enzo Fittipaldi’s first podium of the season, while Theo Purscher took third and led the youth series ahead of Vesti and Iwasa. Frederik rounded out the top five and he was quite strong, trailing Martin by as much as 11 seconds, who finished the race in fourth. But the Dane remained on the second row in the standings – he is five points behind Purscher.

Iwasa dropped to third after an unsuccessful weekend in Baku, but Berman, the winner of the Azerbaijani F2 stage, moved up to fourth. The next, fifth stage of the championship will be held on May 19-21 in Imola, on the home circuit of Prema and Ferrari, and there, of course, the young Briton, inspired by the first serious success, will try to develop it.

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