Formula 2: Sunday race won by Richard Fershhor

The story of Sunday’s Formula 2 race should begin with the events that happened the night before. Theo Purscher, an ART driver who finished second in Saturday’s sprint, was called to the stewards after the race. He was threatened with a 5-second penalty for repeated violations of the track limits, which he managed to dodge.

The stewards agreed that there was no fourth offense, so there are no grounds for such severe penalties. With this, Purscher kept his second place and earned points for that.

And for example his partner, Frederick Vesti, who returned to F2 Roberto Meri and Ollie Caldwell were given such fines. The policy of harsh penalties for non-compliance with the track’s limits has become one of the factors influencing the results of the weekend’s feature race.

It started to dry up on the track after the morning rain and most of the riders started on wet tires. The already mentioned Vesti, the owner of the pole position, slackened the start, allowing Juri Vips to take the lead. And Logan Sargent, who started the race third, let Ayumu Iwasu do his thing, tried to recoup, but couldn’t.

Almost immediately yellow flags appeared on the track due to Marcus Armstrong’s departure – his car stopped on the side of the road and collided with a bump at the exit of the third corner. The New Zealander was one of the few who dared to start on slicks, but was knocked off the track on the first lap by Cem Bolukbashi. The Turkish driver went to the pits to replace a broken front wing, but he stayed there – it turned out the car had suffered more serious damage. He was also on slicks.

Oddly enough, their example didn’t teach anything, and Amaury Kordil of Belgian Van Amersfoort Racing also went to the pits for slicks, although there was still a lot of water in some parts of the track.

To evacuate Armstrong’s car, a safety car briefly entered the track. At the restart the top five held their positions but Felipe Drugovic, the championship leader, for some reason started to lose ground and rolled back to the end of the pack before going into the pits.

And yet the trail dried up before our eyes. Richard Fershhor also chose to start on slicks and on lap seven it was he who led the race. It became clear that it was time for everyone to switch to slicks, so on the next lap almost half of the pack went to the pits together to change tires.

On lap 9, the top five looked like this: Ferskhor was in the lead, Jehan Daruvala was second and 31-year-old Roberto Meri was third. Everyone he fought on the track was about ten years his junior. Dennis Hauger was fourth and Enzo Fittipaldi was fifth.

But this order quickly changed: Meri attacked Daruwala and took the lead thanks to a nice and precise braking maneuver in the 3rd corner.

On lap 13, previously ahead of Fittipaldi, Liam Lawson started a fight with Dennis Hauger for position, but the Norwegian fought back. Then both went to the pits to change tires. Mary also entered the pit lane and returned to the track in fifth, but behind Lawson. But Roberto quickly beat the New Zealander.

Meanwhile, Logan Sargent, who had a great race, caught the eye: after switching to slicks, he had already surpassed several rivals, including Lawson and Fittipaldi, to reach 4th position.

With exactly half the deficit, the stewards announced that Vesti had been given a 5-second penalty for going off the track and taking an undue advantage. This was after he had a brief fight with Iwasa on the 3rd turn of the track, even using contact wrestling techniques.

Fershhor led by more than three seconds over Daruwala, Meri was third, but Sargent tried to overtake him, although it looked as if the American, pushing forward, had used up the stock of tires, and they no longer allowed him to pass. to fetch. maintain a fast pace. Fittipaldi tried to take advantage of this, having already regained seven positions and now aiming for Sargent.

On lap 24, the stewards announced another 5-second penalty – this time penalizing Jack Doohan, who took the podium yesterday. And today he was unlucky, driving only 16th, while allowing chronic violations of the track’s limits, for which he was fined. And after a few rounds, they threw him another 10 seconds, all for the same thing.

On lap 26, Fittipaldi tried to attack Sargent, but the first attempt failed. The next could be expected soon, as the rivals’ cars were only half a second apart.

Fershor, in the lead, took the lead to five seconds, Daruvala was lagging more and more, but Mary seemed unable to hold onto Indian driver Prema Racing. By the way, Roberto started penultimate and immediately risked putting on slicks, but by this stage of the race he had already regained 18 positions!

With 10 laps to go, Fershor continued to lead the race and overall the top five more or less stabilized. Interestingly, Felipe Drugovic and Theo Pursher, who occupy the first two lines of the individual standings, only finished in the middle of the second ten today: the Brazilian drove 14th, Pursher – 15th, and it was clear they wouldn’t. . make it into the top ten.

Literally every lap the stewards announced penalties to the next racer: on lap 33 I was given a 5 second penalty. Of course for not respecting the limits of the route. On the 35th, the same penalty overtook Frederick Vesti.

Closer to the finish, Roberto Meri turned to active actions: apparently the experience allowed him to save the rubber well and quickly began to close the gap with Daruwala. There were still five laps to go until the end of the race, and the Spaniard was already 0.3 seconds close to the Indian’s car, and it looked like it was already possible to attack, but Mary was still cautious.

Since their confrontation lasted more than one circle, Logan Sargent took advantage of this and was already driving quite close to them. Meri understood that it was time to intervene and in the penultimate lap after a tense duel he was still ahead of Daruwala. However, it immediately became known about the decision of the stewards to add 5 penalty seconds to the Spaniard – the reason is the same, non-compliance with the limits of the track.

It turned out that the second place won with so much effort had to be taken away from him. But everyone on the track saw that Roberto finished behind Richard Fershhor, the winner of the race.

Only a few seconds passed after waving the checkered flag when the results were revised: Fershor, of course, remained in first place, but Daruvala moved up to second, Sargent to third. Additionally, fourth place went to Fittipaldi and Meri rolled back to fifth.

After the finish, an amusing episode occurred: Fershor’s car failed to reach the pit lane (it seems the hydraulics failed), and the Dutchman was picked up by Aston Martin, the race’s medical car. Richard was then taken to a locked park and the green crossover stopped at the number 1 plate – where the winner’s Dallara should have stopped. For Fershhor this is the second win this season – in the first stage in Bahrain he won Saturday’s sprint.

Sunday race results