Formula 2: Crawford wins sprint to opening win

Before the start of the Formula 2 sprint on Saturday, there was a moment of silence as the drivers and leaders of the youth series paid tribute to Dilano van’t Hoff, the Dutch MP Motorsport driver who died today during a European Formula Regional race in Spa.

The weather on Saturday around the Red Bull Ring circuit changed every few hours, and if the “shootout” in Formula 1 took place on a track that dried up after rain and everyone was on slicks, then shortly before the start of the F2 sprint , it seems to be drizzling again. But the rain soon stopped, so one of the riders decided to start on slicks anyway, even though half of the cars had bad-weather tyres.

But even at the end of the warm-up lap, Roy Nissani decided to pit for slicks, so he started from the pit lane.

Jake Crawford started quite confidently from pole position, but already on the first lap he couldn’t stay on track – and he started on slicks – and Arthur Leclerc, riding on wet tyres, took the lead. Theo Purscher broke through to second position and the excellent start Frederik Vesti, who started the race in ninth, reached 3rd position in one lap.

But then Jehan Daruvala, driving on slicks, lost control of the car, flew off the track to the side of the road, as a result of which the safety car intervened in the proceedings.

Many riders took advantage of this and pitted for slicks, but the rain started to drizzle again, so it was not clear how justified this decision was.

After the restart, Leclerc was in the lead, Richard Fershhor was in second place, but only until the exit of the first corner! His car went off the track when it spun on a slippery curb, so Bernd Maylander had to get the safety car out of the pit lane again. Incidentally, the Dutchman’s accident was very reminiscent of yesterday’s incident with Valtteri Bottas in the first part of qualifying on Friday – Richard made exactly the same mistake, but unlike the Finnish Alfa Romeo racer, he was unable to continue.

By the second restart the order in the leading group had already changed: Crawford was again ahead, followed by Juan Manuel Correa, and Victor Marten, the winner of yesterday’s qualifying, was now in third position.

In general, the whole length of the peloton, except perhaps the top five, was a fierce battle, despite the rather difficult conditions and the lack of grip, so the leader of the championship, Frederic Vesti, clearly took risks , famous for overtaking rival cars one after the other. After a visit to the pits he was all the way in the tail, but by the tenth lap he had moved up to 12th position.

Of course he not only broke ahead, the same problem was solved by Purscher, who also switched to slicks during the period when there was a safety car on the track, but while the Frenchman was running in 15th. In addition, he was in the line of sight of the stewards investigating the incident in the pit lane: there were suspicions that the ART team unsafely released Theo onto the track.

By the 13th lap Marten had almost overtaken Correa and was clearly preparing an attack, which he executed quite successfully on the next lap and moved into 2nd place. Now he had to play just over a second and a half to overtake Crawford.

Meanwhile French Trident rider Clement Novalak first beat Isaac Hadjar to 4th position, and now he put pressure on Correa and clearly claimed the podium. An interesting duel ensued between the two riders, Clement attacked very aggressively, didn’t let go of his grip for a few laps, still putting pressure on the opponent and took 3rd place.

But just then Enzo Fittipaldi flew off the track, he was spun as he attacked Cush Maini, the Campos rider, and it seems there was a little contact between them. A virtual safety car mode was introduced for a short time, but the track battle resumed on the 21st lap.

And then the stewards’ verdict on Purcher came out: he was fined 5 seconds for leaving the pits unsafely. But Theo was only 13th so he didn’t claim any points so he had little to lose and was unlikely to be very upset.

Crawford held on to the lead, but with four laps to go Marten was 2.4 seconds behind and it didn’t look like Victor was going to fight for the win.

On lap 24, Dennis Hauger overtook Oliver Berman and moved up to 8th position. And Vesti made it into the top ten, but not even because of the next overtaking maneuver and Maini’s mistake, who went off the track in the 3rd corner.

On the last lap, Roman almost overtook Stanek Correa and was about to attack him, but it seems he didn’t have time, but Hauger surpassed Jack Duane on the same lap with daring maneuvers and climbed to 7th position.

In the meantime, a rather frantic race has come to an end, with Jake Crawford, an 18-year-old American from the state of North Carolina, crossing the finish line first, and this is his first such success in Formula 2, where he makes his debut season.

Victor Marten saw the second black and white checkered flag and thanks to the points scored in the sprint, he was able to move from the 10th line of the personal classification immediately to sixth. They were joined on the podium by Clement Novalak, for him this is also the best result of this year.

But during the sprint, the stewards noted numerous violations that will be investigated after the finish, so changes could still be made to the race’s preliminary protocol.