F2: Rain and accidents prevented the sprint

Already after yesterday’s Formula 2 qualifying it was announced that Richard Fershhor, the driver of the Dutch team Van Amersfoort Racing, has been fined and will lose three places at the start of Saturday’s sprint.

The stewards thought he was interfering with Carlin’s Zane Maloney at turn 8 on Zandvoort when he put in a fast lap, so on his home stage Richard started the short race from a distant 17th position – much to the dismay of the local fans. But further events developed in such a way that the audience had new reasons for negative emotions.

Theo Purscher was due to start from pole position on Saturday and lead the individual classification of the youth series, but he was unlucky: the ART team mechanics fiddled with his car to the last, so the Frenchman didn’t. had time to leave the pits in time, forcing him to start the race with a pit lane.

The rain, which had already subsided at the end of the Formula 1 training session, clearly intensified by the time the sprint in F2 started, so firstly they decided to start on the road, and secondly it was given 8 minutes later .

In the absence of Purscher, Isaac Hadjar actually started ahead of everyone, with the 9th fastest time in qualifying, and on the wet track he was in the most favorable position, as he was the only one who saw more or less normally what happened in qualifying . front of his car.

But in the individual classification, Isaac only took 15th place, but Victor Marten, who started behind him, had something to fight for, and today he clearly hoped to excel, so he immediately tried to overtake his opponent.

But he failed to complete his plan as yellow flags appeared on the track and the safety car took off. This happened as a result of an accident, which dropped three cars out of the race at once: on the exit of the 3rd corner, there was contact between Jack Crawford and Kush Maini. In addition, Ralph Boschung also crashed into them – causing the Campos team to exit the race in full force.

The accident was quite dangerous: the cars of the Spanish team collided with one on top of the other. Fortunately, only the hardware was damaged.

The yellow flags changed to red and all drivers returned to the pit lane and the rain had already stopped. But the top five cars were lined up in a slightly different order than at the start, as Oliver Berman managed to get ahead of Juan Manuel Correa in the opening corners and moved into third position.

The evacuation of three broken cars and the repair of the rail fences took quite some time, but a restart was scheduled for 2:00 pm local time. Admittedly, by then it had started to rain again, and quite heavily, and the peloton returned to the track before the safety car. Race management announced that the restart will take place from the move and the sprint will finish in 22 minutes.

But the battle on the track did not resume, as it turned out that there was too much water on the pavement, which is why aquaplaning begins almost immediately and visibility is almost zero, so all cars returned to the pit lane.

In such conditions, the race is really too dangerous and the race management has decided not to resume it. It is clear that everyone was disappointed, especially the fans, who were looking forward to an interesting sprint and got wet in the rain for this. It turns out in vain.

Since the race was stopped on the very first lap after the start, it cannot be acknowledged that it took place. That is why no points are awarded to anyone today. If anyone is happy with that, it’s Theo Purscher, because the position in the individual classification has not changed and he remained leader.