Formula 2: Jeddah Sprint won by Richard Ferschor

Today was a rather rare case where news from Formula 1 also affected F2: with Carlos Sainz temporarily out of action due to health problems, Ferrari decided to entrust the second car to 18-year-old Briton Oliver Burman, the team’s reserve driver .

The winner of yesterday’s qualifying in Jeddah will therefore not be able to participate in the races of the second stage of the season, but unexpectedly interesting perspectives will open up for the student of the Ferrari Racing Academy if he can show himself clearly. However, that’s another story, and let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

But the fact is that Oliver cannot take part in the youth series races this weekend, so the starting field was revised and Jose Maria Marti started from tenth position in the sprint, where a partially reversible grid is used. And tomorrow, in the main race of the weekend, Kush Maini will take pole.

Today, Paul Aaron, an Estonian driver from the Hitech team, started the short race from pole position, but even before the start he doubted whether he would have enough speed to maintain the lead and create an advantage over his rivals. he was ready to give up the first position.

But in the first laps this was not necessary: ​​Paul took off perfectly and immediately went quite fast, but yellow flags immediately appeared on the track, and for several reasons at once. First, the cars of Zach O’Sullivan and Franco Colapinto were left on the starting field – for some reason they could not get going. But the biggest problem was different: in the first corners there was an incident involving several cars.

It all started with contact between the cars of Kimi Antonelli, who had a bad start and lost several positions, and Jack Crawford, but someone also hit Victor Martin’s Dallara, sending it into the bump stop, and the race was over as quickly as possible for the Frenchman. as it had started.

The safety car came out and remained on the track for several laps while the marshals evacuated the ART team car from the track and attempted to collect carbon debris from the asphalt.

On the fifth lap there was a restart, Aaron again performed his task quite normally and retained the lead, but behind his car a fierce battle unfolded between Dennis Hauger and Maini for 4th position, and the Norwegian MP Motorsport driver emerged victorious out of battle.

Aaron failed to create a gap, or preferred to save his tires, but Richard Ferschor chased him, not exactly close, but their cars were separated by less than a second. This did not last long, already on the 8th lap Ferkhsor made a successful attack and took the lead in the race. A few laps later, Hauger followed suit and, thanks to slipstream and DRS, calmly overtook Isaac Hajjar and moved up to third position.

However, the race was canceled for the second time due to yellow flags and the safety car was brought out again when the car of Belgian Amaury Cordil, Aaron’s teammate, was stopped on track. In addition, he stopped in the middle of the track at the exit of the second corner, forcing the peloton to follow the safety car through the pit lane.

In the 12th round the fight resumed. Ferkhsor kept the first place, Aaron was almost a second and a half behind him, but at the end of the top ten Jack Crawford launched a decisive attack on Jose Maria Marti and took the 8th position from the Spanish series debutant. This was not enough for the American and already in the next lap he was ahead of Maini.

With five laps to go, Maloney (who was hampered by technical problems yesterday, but was running seventh today) tried to attack Hadjar in front of him, but he very decisively slammed the gate, and the winner of both races of the first stage had to deviating from the track to avoid contact. At the same time he lost some speed, which Crawford tried to take advantage of and went on the attack, but he was unable to stay ahead of the racer from the island of Barbados.

Yellow flags briefly appeared on the track and a virtual safety car mode was introduced. When Juan Manuel Correa hit the bump stop, carbon fragments flew in different directions and the race was neutralized so the marshals could remove them. Correa got out, of course.

Three laps before the finish, Hauger made a successful attack on Aaron, overtook him and moved into second position. The top three were noticeably ahead of the rest of the pack, and it even looked like Hauger would try to overtake the leader, but then the race ended and Richard Verschor was the first to see the checkered flag – seven tenths ahead of his pursuer.

For the Dutch Trident driver, this is the fifth victory in Formula 2, and if he finished in 10th place in the individual classification last season, he will certainly try to build on today’s success in the coming stages to this year to achieve more. .

Sprint results