Formula 2: Vesti won and led the individual classification

Saturday’s sprint in Monaco was won by Ayumu Iwasa, allowing him to temporarily take the lead in the individual standings, but in the weekend’s feature race he started from 9th position, so there was little chance of a repeat of the success of yesterday.

At the same time, Theo Purscher, who was only 2 points behind him, started the race from third place and, of course, hoped to please his fans. With the deletion of the French Grand Prix from the Formula 1 calendar, French motorsport fans are now flocking to Monaco. Of course they will also go to Le Mans, but the legendary daily marathon will only take place in a few weeks.

And the third row of the individual standings was occupied by Frederic Vesti, so he also had something to fight for, and it was he who won qualifying on Friday. Therefore, given the specifics of the narrow city circuit, it was the Danish racer Prema, a member of the Mercedes youth program, who had the maximum chances of winning.

And of course it was impossible to write off Victor Martin, another Frenchman, F2 debutant and Purcher’s teammate on the ART team. He started the season quite cheerfully, climbing the podium a few times, but then his luck turned against him and for today’s race he was only 15th in the championship.

When the lights of the start traffic light went out, it seemed that the owner of the pole was a little hesitant when starting, so Marten first did not allow Purscher to slip forward along the inside curb and then already in the 1st corner tried to pass Vesti , but the Dane managed to keep the lead.

On the first lap, Oliver Berman proved that overtaking is still possible in Monaco: the Briton famously outran Amaury Kordil and Clement Novalak and moved up to 12th position. However, Kordil turned into the pits almost immediately and stayed there. Apparently there were some technical problems.

At the beginning of the fifth lap, Vesti managed to get away from Marten by only seven and a half tenths, but at the same time he gradually accelerated and his lead gradually grew, already more than a second after a lap. Marten, in turn, pulled away from Purscher for more than a second, and he – from Jack Duane, who was fourth.

On lap 8, Novalak and Ralf Boschung were the first to go to the mandatory pit stop and of course, back on track, they finished in last positions. On lap 9, Arthur Leclerc, the Ferrari driver’s younger brother, also turned into the pits, but it was not a pit stop, but a retirement: on the radio he complained to the team that his car’s brakes were failing.

On lap 13, Iwasa and Isaac Hadjar pitted for new tires – both were in the top ten, but now they were outside. At the same time, Frenchman Hitech returned to the track ahead of Jehan Daruwala’s car, who had pitted a lap earlier and was running on hot tyres. Naturally, the Indian immediately tried to attack the debutant of the season, but in vain.

But Ayumu Iwasa acted more decisively in a similar situation. In front of him, starting with a pitley, Berman drove, and the Japanese did not wait to warm up the tires, attacked at the 5th turn and took the lead, rising to 11th position.

With 19 of the race’s 42 laps behind him, Frederic Vesti remained confidently in the lead, extending the lead to almost five seconds, but then Enzo Fittipaldi’s car smoked powerfully from the engine, and this happened in the tunnel. And although the Brazilian immediately stopped the car and drove straight into the safety zone, a virtual safety car (VSC) mode was introduced.

It was then that word got out about the stewards’ decision to issue a 5-second penalty to Dennis Hauger for leaving the track and taking an illegal advantage. As the Norwegian MP Motorsport driver was running 7th at the time, this should have had an impact on the points distribution.

But on lap 22 at Massenet corner a spectacular accident occurred: Jack Doohan crashed the car and he skidded across the track after a hard impact with the rear of the barrier, and it caught fire moments later.

The safety car took off immediately and the leaders took advantage of this, pitting for fresh tyres. If, in the case of Frederic Vesti and Victor Martin, the pit stops went smoothly, then Purcher’s mechanics blundered, the car fell off the jacks, so the process of replacing the rubber dragged on. However, this did not affect his position, he returned to the track in third.

However, the race was stopped by red flags as the tarmac in the area of ​​Duane’s accident was strewn with debris and flooded partly with engineering fluids from the Australian’s wrecked car, partly with foam from the marshals’ fire extinguishers. But it was necessary to put in order not only the coating, but also the fences of the track, since the blow was very strong.

The most important thing, however, is that the rider was not injured. In addition, those following Duane luckily managed to react when they saw an unexpected obstacle ahead and dodged a car in the middle of the road. By the way, Jack was fourth and now Zane Maloney has moved to this position.

On the replay it was clear that Duane made a mistake a few corners before the accident and hooked the guardrail with the right rear wheel at the exit of the chicane after the tunnel. Although the impact was on a tangent, the rear suspension of his Dallara was likely damaged and on the next lap at turn 3 it simply broke, leading to a serious accident.

All cars returned to the pit lane and the pilots left the cockpits to await further developments. Ten minutes passed before the race management’s decision to restart was announced at 10:45 am local time. Racers began to put their helmets back on and take their places in the cars. At the restart the top five looked like this: Vesti – Marten – Purscher – Maloney – Richard Fershor.

It is curious that the Virtuosi Racing team decided to return Amory Kordil to the track, although he had already lost 18 laps to the leader. That is why the Belgian left the boxes, did a lap and returned to the pit lane at the end of the peloton. The restart was given behind the safety car.

On lap 26 the race resumed, Vesti kept the lead and Purscher, running second, immediately started to apply pressure. But the rubber hasn’t warmed up properly yet, so there was no attack.

Through the circle, Frederic again pulled away from the nearest pursuer by over a second, but Purcher drove almost close behind Martin, who incidentally came within sight of the stewards. It soon became known that Victor received a pit lane penalty for not braking enough after Duane’s accident, when there were already yellow flags on the track.

In general, all Marten’s podium hopes were immediately buried: after serving a penalty, he returned to the track in 8th. But moving into the top three was Maloney, another Formula 2 debutant, for whom it was the second podium of the season.

Ten laps to go, Vesti was already 2.5 seconds ahead of Purscher, but Maloney was already five seconds behind Theo, so only Richard Fershhor and Dennis Hauger could expect active action in the top five, as their cars only finished by a second interval of were separated.

But the first offensive actions were not taken by them, but by other riders who were well outside the top ten: Roy Nissani tried to get ahead of Clement Novalak at the exit of the tunnel, but it all ended with the French driver having to take the chicane cut off, since it couldn’t fit two cars. The stewards began investigating this episode, believing that Novalak had been given an illegal advantage.

Marten was offended that he didn’t have a podium, so Viktor clearly put pressure on Roman Stanek and tried to gain back at least one position and climb to 7th, but the Czech defended quite correctly and was able to hold on to the finish, especially since he got three laps early because the race time was just up.

So Frederik Vesti took the second win of the season, making him the series leader, Theo Purscher took second and stayed on the second row of the individual standings, and Zane Maloney finished third and climbed the podium for second time this season, which the rider got from Carlin unexpectedly which was even better.

Racing results