Formula 2: Franco Colapinto won Saturday’s sprint

After two adjustments to qualifying results yesterday, Amaury Cordil, a 21-year-old Belgian driving for the Hitech team, started from pole during Saturday’s Formula 2 race in Imola.

Since the start of the season, he has scored only 10 points and is in 16th place in the personal rankings, while his teammate, the Estonian Paul Aron, is in 2nd place, i.e. the difference in skill is quite clear.

But in yesterday’s qualifying Kordil posted the tenth fastest time, and F2 uses a partially reversed starting order, so today he was on pole. However, faster riders, including his teammate, started the sprint behind him, so it could be expected that he would not hold the first position for long.

And so it happened, and Paul Aron took the lead already in the first corners, but we did not see any further developments, as at the start several rather dramatic accidents occurred in the middle of the pack, leaving five cars out of the race. fight in one go. Dennis Hauger, Roman Stanek, Isaac Hajjar, Joshua Durkesen and Enzo Fittipaldi were unable to continue the race. This episode looked pretty scary, and the video replay showed that it all started with contact between Hadjar and Stanek’s cars, followed by a chain reaction. Someone was lucky in this situation, because some drivers literally miraculously managed to avoid the colliding cars of their rivals. But Fittipaldi, for example, bumped into someone precisely because he simply had nowhere to go.

Of course, the safety car immediately came out, and before the restart the top five looked like this: Paul Aron – Amaury Cordille – Franco Colapinto – Zane Maloney – Oliver Berman.

On the fifth lap, the battle on the track resumed, Aron retained the lead and this time all participants in the race acted more carefully and cautiously, so that no overtaking occurred yet. However, just one lap later, Colapinto overtook Cordil on the straight, even without DRS, and took second position.

With ten laps behind him, of which only six were normal, Aron was in the lead with a lead of more than one and a half seconds, while the peloton behind him was very close, but no one had made any attacking moves yet.

At that point it was announced that the stewards had decided to punish Pepe Marti, the Campos driver, for incorrect actions at the start, and he went to the pits to serve a 10-second time penalty.

About halfway through the 25-lap sprint, Colapinto picked up his pace, setting the best lap of this stage of the race and closing the gap on the leader. Now their cars were separated in less than a second and the Argentinian MP Motorsport driver could already use DRS.

On lap 15 he tried to attack and was already close to Arona’s silver Dalllara, but he retained the lead, although it seemed that his tires no longer provided the necessary grip, and it was impossible to say with confidence that Paul was capable would be to stay ahead. Behind this pair, Zane Maloney, the leader of the personal championship of the youth series, acted in much the same way, wanting to stay ahead of Kordil, but was also unsuccessful.

The racers went lap after lap, the finish line was getting closer, but no one made any effective maneuvers, although the same Maloney literally buried himself in the gearbox of Kordil’s car and it seemed as if an attack would follow.

There were only three laps to go until the end of the race, and it was clear that the tires of many cars were already quite worn, and there were no new sharp moments for a long time, although it was hard to believe that Maloney would give up to compete for a place on the podium. And he still caught his opponent at the beginning of the 23rd lap, forcing him to make a mistake and moving ahead in the combination of turns 2 and 3.

On the last lap Colapinto also launched an attack, and although Aron defended himself to the last and there was even contact between the cars, Franco still took the lead and achieved his first victory of the season and in F2 in general! Paul complained to the team on the radio that the Argentinian had done wrong, but the overtaking was wonderful and it would be a shame if the maneuver turned out not to be according to the rules.

The stewards really started to clarify the circumstances of this episode, but quickly concluded that everything was clear. Franco Colapinto reached the top of the podium, Paul Aron took 2nd place and Zane Maloney finished third, naturally maintaining his lead in the championship.

Since Aron scored more points today, the lead of the rider from the island of Barbados has decreased somewhat. On the one hand, the picture could change tomorrow, on the other hand, Maloney will start ahead of Aron and, as we saw today, even in Formula 2 it is quite difficult to regain positions.

The results are being prepared…