Formula 2: Isaac Hajjar takes his first victory

After yesterday’s Formula 2 qualifying in Melbourne, Roman Stanek, the 20-year-old Czech driver of the Trident team, who has not yet achieved a victory, started from pole in the sprint on Saturday and today he has the chance to change that to take.

Next to him, Gabriel Bortoleto started the race from the front row, an even younger Brazilian F2 debutant and last year’s F3 champion, who naturally had an equally combative spirit. However, the same could be said about all the riders who started from the front rows.

However, in the first seconds of the race, events developed in a rather unusual way: immediately after the start, the cars of Bortoleto and Jose Maria Marti collided, after which they fell into the barrier on the right side of the track. Bortoleto started poorly, Marty started to get ahead of him, but in fact they were knocked off track by Isaac Hadjar, who started from third position and moved sharply to the right.

Bortoleto and Marty’s cars broke down, both drivers retired, but Hadjar took the lead! Stanek rode second, Paul Aaron moved into third position and behind him was Zane Maloney, the winner of the first two races of the season and the leader of the individual standings. Actually, at the start there was a collision right in front of his car, which allowed him to move up a number of positions.

Naturally, the safety car came out and the stewards began to investigate the incident. While the peloton drove in front of the safety car, Amaury Cordil decided to pit (which was not necessary as it was a short race) and switched to soft tyres.

At the restart, Hadjar kept the lead, Stanek – his second position, Aaron – third, but Maloney had problems, he made a mistake, flew off the track and rolled back just outside the top ten.

The stewards said the incident at the start involving Hadjar, Bortoleto and Marty would be investigated after the finish of the race.

By the 10th lap Hadjar had increased his lead to 6.5 seconds, but Stanek seemed to be holding off everyone else, and Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Richard Verschor were about to attack him, but the Italian made a mistake, he was rotated at high speed. , and he hit the Dutchman’s car. It all ended when they both retired, the track was littered with debris and the safety car came out again. Aaron was also involved in the incident, but was able to continue despite losing many positions and with a damaged front wing.

Antonelli informed the Prema team about what happened on the radio and admitted his guilt – in general, the debut season in F2 for one of the most promising representatives of the young generation has been rather unsuccessful so far.

A second restart followed on the 15th lap, Hadjar was still in the lead, Stanek was second, Kush Maini rose to third position after all the incidents and Dennis Hauger, the winner of yesterday’s qualifying, was fourth.

Hadjar immediately created a 2.5 second lead, but Stanek pushed Maini with all his might and clearly claimed 2nd place. position.

On the 18th lap, in sector 3, yellow flags appeared again, this time due to the departure of series debutant Joshua Duerksen in Turn 10, who was still able to return to the track, albeit at the very tail of the pack. The yellow flags were removed, the battle on track resumed and Victor Martin, thanks to a dashing overtaking move, overtook Zach O’Sullivan to climb to 7th position.

Hadjar was already almost five seconds ahead, while Stanek again gathered a whole train of cars behind him, but Maini, no matter how hard he tried, could not get ahead of him, even though there were only two laps to go before the finish of the race.

Hauger almost overtook the Indian and on the 22nd lap he performed a beautiful overtaking move along the outside stretch, moving up to 3rd position. Then Dennis pressured Stanek until the last corner, and if he had made even the slightest mistake he would probably have been ahead of him, but Roman defended himself expertly and retained second position.

Of course, no one could stop Isaac Hajjar, the French driver of the Red Bull youth program, from taking his first victory in Formula 2, although it will of course be interesting what the stewards will say about his actions at the start. But we won’t know that for some time.

Roman Stanek deservedly climbed to the second step of the podium, and Dennis Hauger to third place, who fought very well and earned a lot of points, which allowed him to gain a foothold in second place in the individual competition. Since Maloney didn’t earn anything today due to a successful set of circumstances, Hauger could take the lead tomorrow. However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The results are being prepared…