Formula 2: Jack Crawford won Sunday’s race

This weekend Paul Aron, the Estonian Hitech driver who leads the Formula 2 driver standings, seemed to be doing everything right, or at least that was the case until today. On Friday in Barcelona he won qualifying, finished fourth in the sprint, but ended up on the podium after a penalty from Juan Manuel Correa.

Before the main race of the Spanish weekend, Paul’s lead over Isaac Hajjar, who took sixth place yesterday, was seven points. It is clear that Aron’s main task was to develop this advantage, and there were opportunities for this, as the French driver of Campos Racing started on Sunday from 11th position and getting ahead on the Catalan ring is not easy, even behind the steering wheel of rather agile cars from the youth series.

Jack Crawford, the American DAMS rider who started from second position, was obviously not going to make it easy for Paul and was in a very aggressive mood.

Not everyone could go to the formation lap – Kimi Antonelli’s car stopped, the marshals pushed him into the pit lane and he had to start the race from there.

Paul Aroon made a confident start, holding first position, Crawford was second, Franco Colapinto was third, but an incident occurred at the first corner involving several cars. Unluckiest of all were Victor Martin, yesterday’s sprint winner, and Dennis Hauger – both stopped when their car spun and got stuck in the gravel in the safety zone.

The replay of this episode showed that Hauger attacked the curb too aggressively, his car lost stability, started to spin and pushed Martin’s Dallara off the track.

The rest of the riders who were somehow affected by this incident and had to avoid the collision, including on the side of the road, managed to continue.

The safety car came out, but a restart followed on the third lap. Aron carried it out calmly and confidently and after one lap brought the lead to 1.2 seconds.

Oliver Berman had a good start to the race, complaining yesterday of a catastrophic lack of pace and handling problems, but after starting from 15th position on the fifth lap he was already ninth and starting to apply pressure on Zach O’Sullivan. It is true that Enzo Fittipaldi tried to hinder him and stayed close behind Berman in tenth place, but it seems that the soft tires of the Brazilian’s car are already starting to lose their effectiveness.

Joshua Duerksen, the Paraguayan driver of AIX Racing, stayed ahead of Isaac Hajjar after a short duel, who got off to a great start and already rose to fifth place, but the Formula 2 debutant took that away.

Fittipaldi and Zane Mallonee were the first to make the mandatory pit stop, with Enzo losing position to the Barbandian driver – possibly due to the fact that Van Amersfoort Racing mechanics not only changed the tires but also adjusted the rear-view mirrors, as Enzo complained. the radio that they were ‘looking somewhere in the sky’.

On lap 12, Aron went to the pits and because there was a problem during the pit stop, he returned to the track in 9th place, having lost position to Crawford.

On lap 14, the virtual safety car mode was introduced as Taylor Barnard’s car stopped on track, but the race resumed almost immediately.

But on the 17th lap, while chasing Crawford, Aron made an unforgivable mistake exiting the final corner, and his car was carried to the side of the road. Paul made his way through the safety zone and returned to the track, losing three positions. This gave Crawford a great chance to win, and the Estonian himself ruined the weekend that started so well.

On the 18th lap, the VSC mode was reintroduced, this time due to the fact that Durksen’s car, which was leading at the time, as it was not yet in the pits, lost power and stopped.

Before the restart, the top five looked like this: Juan Manuel Correa was in the lead, followed by Kush Maini, then Richard Ferschor, Amaury Cordil and Jose Marti, but they still had a pit stop. And the first of the drivers who had already changed tires was of course Crawford, and he still finished seventh.

There was a restart on lap 20 and Paul Aron made up ground with a daring overtaking maneuver at Turn 1 to stay ahead of O’Sullivan. But Franco Colapinto, who was running 9th, still had 3.5 seconds to go, while the Argentinian battled with Gabriele Bortoleto for 8th position, who should change to second place at the end of the race when everyone made their pit stops. haven’t been yet.

15 laps before the finish, Colapinto launched another attack, which proved successful: during braking at the end of the straight, Franco was ahead of his opponent. But as they dealt with each other, Aron managed to regain over a second, closing the gap to the Brazilian to 2.1.

Crawford remained sixth, more than 3 seconds ahead of Colapinto, and at the same time almost overtook Antonelli, who had not yet changed tires and remained on track on already worn hard tires. On the 26th lap Jack overtook Kimi and moved up to 5th position.

There were still ten laps to go in the race when Paul Aron overtook Bortleto’s yellow car and began preparing an attack. At that point Correa turned into the pits, but around the time he returned to the track, at the start of the 28th lap, Aron managed to overtake the Argentinian and seemed to take an important step towards the podium.

The pit stops continued, eventually everyone else changed tires and Crawford returned to the lead, Colapinto came third, who tried to chase Paul Aron, but their cars were almost four seconds apart.

Bortoleto remained fourth, but on lap 31 he was ahead of Correa, who was one of the last to change tires and drove very quickly on completely fresh, soft tires. Shortly before, Juan Manuel had also overtaken Isaac Hajjar, and now he was overtaking Aron.

The Estonian resisted and tried to hold on to third position, but in vain – his hard tires were already starting to fail and he could not fend off the American’s attack.

On lap 34, Kush Maini made a risky run around the outside of Turn 1 to pass Zane Maloney and move up to 7th position. On the next lap, Isaac Hadjar had already overtaken Aron and was already putting pressure on him quite actively – he had something to fight for, because it was important for him to try to take at least some points from the Estonian, so that , For example, with successful development of the events he would reach the championship leaders within a week.

On the last lap, Kush Maini decided to attack Bortoleto, his Invicta teammate, but he did not want to give up his position and there was contact between the cars, carbon fragments flew around, but both kept moving. The Indian already completed the maneuver on the side of the road, so it is likely that this will not be in vain for him and he may be fined.

And then the race ended, Jack Crawford took his first win of the season and he performed very well today, together with the DAMS team, clearly implementing their chosen tactics. Second place went to Franco Colapinto and third place went to Crawford’s teammate Juan Manuel Correa, for whom this was the first podium of the season.

With two American drivers on the podium of the youth series, Formula 1 teams should probably look more closely at whether they really want fast drivers from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

But in the individual F2 championship, the entire top three are quite far from the leaders, meaning Paul Aron not only kept the lead, but also increased the lead to 9 points. However, the rivalry is quite intense, and it is entirely possible that it will only intensify with each successive phase.

The results are being prepared…