Kush Maini was lucky to finish second in qualifying this weekend, but pole holder Oliver Burman is urgently needed by Ferrari and cannot race in Formula 2. As a result, the Indian Invicta Racing driver not only inherited the best starting position, but he also got two points for winning the qualifying, which is a bit strange because he wasn’t the one who showed the best time.
By the way, this moment caused indignant comments from fans: on social networks, many wrote that these two points should have remained with Berman.
Be that as it may, on the grid of the main race of the Saudi weekend, Maini’s yellow Dallara was on pole, and next to her in second place was the car of Jack Crawford, an American driver from the DAMS team.
Debutant Taylor Barnard’s car was unable to move during the warm-up lap and was pushed into the pit lane.
When the traffic lights went out, Maini acted confidently and kept the first position, Crawford followed him, but Victor Martin started poorly from third position and allowed two rivals to go ahead at once – he was ahead of Enzo Fittipaldi and Kimi Antonelli.
But yellow flags immediately appeared on the track and the safety car came out. This was due to a multi-car incident: Jose Maria Marti appears to have made a mistake, his car spun and ended up in the middle of the track. But before that he was hit by Roman Stanek, and debris also flew from his Dallara, and Franco Colapinto’s car was also slightly damaged. But when the Argentinian was able to continue the race, Marty and Stanek stopped.
On the 4th lap they restarted, Maini stayed in front, he was chased by Crawford, Fittipaldi was third and Antonelli was fourth. In addition, the Prema team gave the following instructions to their debutant on the radio: “Don’t look in the mirrors, but ahead! Attack!” As further developments of events showed, Kimi was not entirely successful in fulfilling it.
Martin couldn’t stay in the top five, he was ahead of Dennis Hauger and Isaac Hajjar was already pushing hard. Last year the French racer ART behaved much more confidently, but since the start of this season things are clearly not going well for him for some reason. On the seventh lap Hadjar was ahead of him.
On the same lap the mandatory pit stops started and Crofurd was one of the first to go for new tyres, so Fittipaldi temporarily moved up to 2nd position and Antonelli into third. But after one lap, all three entered the pit lane and Juan Manuel Correa, who had yet to visit the pits, took the lead.
Meanwhile, it was announced that the Ritomo Miata received a 10-second Stop&Go penalty for taking the wrong position on the starting grid. He served his punishment on the 12th lap and fell right to the tail of the pack.
After the pit stop there was an interesting battle for 9th position, and Crofurd and Antonelli started virtually for places on the podium, and the American was ahead of the Prema driver, after which Kimi could not resist Hajjar’s attack.
Martin continued to fall back: on lap 12 he was ahead of Zane Maloney, the winner of the first two races of the season, who had bad luck at the start of the weekend but gradually moved forward and reached the top ten.
On the 13th lap, Fittipaldi made a beautiful overtake against Maini and thus moved ahead of the Indian driver, whose career has been led by Mika Hakkinen since this year. Thanks to his maneuver, the Brazilian rose to 4th position, but the three riders ahead of him still had to make pit stops. Enzo has already made a serious bid for victory. He backed this up with the fastest lap of this stage of the race.
At the end of the 14th lap, exiting the last corner, Franco Colapinto calculated neither the speed nor the trajectory, hit the barrier with his right rear wheel and this ended with a puncture and the car spinning on the first lap. turn of the next round. The car stopped and the safety car returned to the track.
In this situation, luck smiled on the drivers who had not yet made a pit stop. With the battle on track neutralized, Amaury Cordill and Taylor Barnard managed to visit the pits, obtain new sets of tires and return to the track ahead of the rest of the pack. And only Correa, who was in the lead, for some reason did not follow their example and stayed on the track, which is why he still had to go to the pits.
When the safety car entered the pit lane, there were still 10 laps to go until the finish.
On the restart, Fittipaldi passed Barnard and moved to 3rd position. But Hadjar, who was running seventh, slowed sharply due to some technical problems and slowly returned to the pits.
On the 22nd lap, Fittipaldi performed an absolutely fantastic overtaking move, at the end of the start-finish straight and in the first two corners in front of two cars at the same time – both Cordil and Correa – and led the race.
On the 24th lap, yellow flags appeared again and the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) mode was introduced – this happened due to the retirement of O’Sullivan, who was not sharing the track with Rafael Villagomez. But even before that, Maini managed to stay ahead of Kordil and took 3rd position.
The VSC mode was quickly canceled and on the restart Dennis Hauger tried to attack Antonelli but he kept 5th position but acted too aggressively and pushed his opponent off the track. Therefore, the position had to be given up on the next lap and in the closing stages of the race the Norwegian was already in the top five.
And then another great episode happened: on the last lap, in the last corner, Dennis got ahead of Amaury Cordil for the first time, and already at the beginning of the finish he overtook Crawford literally just before the finish!
But Enzo Fittipaldi crossed the finish line more than seven seconds ahead of everyone else: the representative of the famous racing dynasty achieved his second victory in Formula 2, and did so brilliantly.
Second place went to Kush Maini, third place went to Dennis Hauger, whose performance today also deserves praise.
Two rounds into the season, Zane Maloney, who earned points for 7th today, continues to lead the championship, but Fittipaldi has moved up to second in the individual standings. A podium finish in the weekend’s feature race moved Dennis Hauger into third place.
The next race of the youth series will be held in Australia – in two weeks’ time the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne will host a Formula 2 race for the second time.
The results are being prepared…
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
