Formula 2: Antonelli takes his second win of the season

Isaac Hadjar, the leader of the Formula 2 individual standings, extended his lead after Saturday’s sprint at the Hungaroring, albeit only by a few points, but he would start from third position in the main race of the Hungarian weekend.

We’ll come back to him later, but Paul Aron, French driver Campos’ closest rival and a member of the Red Bull youth programme, started from pole. Of course, the Estonian’s job was to get maximum points, and any result other than victory didn’t seem to please him. The Estonian, who drives for the Hithech team, had said the day before that he had a fighting spirit, when he drove aggressively in the first race and finished sixth after starting from 10th position.

Of course, other drivers who started from the first five rows – Enzo Fittipaldi, Gabriel Bortoleto, Victor Martin, Dennis Hauger, Kimi Antonelli and Zane Maloney – could also claim high results.

But as sometimes happened, certain problems prevented Hadjar from leaving the grid in time. While his mechanics were solving them, the traffic light at the pit lane exit turned red. Thus, Aron gained a considerable tactical advantage before the start of the race, since Hadjar could only start from the pit lane in this situation.

Let’s say, looking ahead, that the Estonian not only did not take advantage of the favorable situation, but failed the race in all respects and had a bad start to begin with. And the best of all was Victor Martin, who led the race, while the pole holder lost several positions and finished only seventh. Moreover, he was driving on tires that were worn out after the brakes had blocked badly, although if he had not braked he would have simply crashed into Martin’s car in turn 1, but this was miraculously avoided.

By the time the drivers had the chance to use DRS, Fittipaldi was already on Martin’s tail and at the start of the third lap he made several attempts to attack. It was interesting to see how their duel was handled aggressively, but at the same time completely correctly, and the Frenchman managed to defend the first position.

Not even a second behind the Brazilian was his compatriot Bortoleto and also chose the moment to attack, but Maloney was slightly behind him, as he had to defend against Antonelli, who was clearly fighting for 4th position. The Prema team urged the Italian on the radio, urging him to get ahead of Zane as soon as possible, and Kimi did not disappoint, he performed a beautiful overtaking move.

And then the following happened: Aron saw how the events were developing in front of him and tried to take advantage of the situation. He rushed to the attack to overtake Hauger and Maloney in one go, but it all ended in contact between the cars of Paul and Daan, and both of them retreated.

Aron was already ahead of Hauger, but made a mistake under braking, causing Maloney to go off the track. At the same time, the Estonian’s car spun and stopped, blocking the motorway.

“I ruined my race!” – that was all Aron could say on the radio, admitting that he was categorically wrong.

The safety car came out and stayed on the track until the 10th lap. Some riders went straight into the pits, and the top five before the restart was: Kimi Antonelli – Richard Ferschor – Kush Maini – Victor Martin – Amaury Cordil.

Of course, only Martin managed to make a mandatory pit stop, after changing from soft tyres to a set of hard tyres, on which he would finish, and this was a completely serious attempt to win. But as always in such cases, after an early pit stop, he had to work carefully with the tyres to maintain their effectiveness until the last, 37th lap.

Hadjar also managed to change tires and by lap 13 he was in a distant 16th position. Paul Aron was watching everything that was happening on the track from one of the marshal’s posts, and it was clear from his sad face that he was cursing himself for his thoughtless actions.

On the 15th lap the two drivers made two important overtaking moves: Bortoleto, who had already been in the pits, was ahead of Cordil, who had previously lost 5th position to Ritomo Miata, and Martin displaced Maini from the top three and was already catching up with Ferschor.

It was Martin who set the fastest lap at this stage of the race, but there were still twenty laps to go and it was of course interesting to see how far he would be able to maintain a good speed.

On the 18th lap, Bortoleto decided to attack the Miata, which was not yet in the pits, and took 5th position from it, but the Japanese did not give in. But Martin managed another successful overtaking maneuver: Victor got ahead of Richard Ferschor, climbed to 2nd place and immediately began to chase Antonelli.

On lap 20, Bortoleto made a nice overtaking move on the outside radius and still overtook the Miata.

Antonelli started the 22nd lap as the leader, with a lead of more than 6 seconds, when an incident occurred that allowed him to get a new set of tires with minimal loss of time. In fact, Kordil crashed the car, which brought out the safety car again. It was unclear how long he would stay because the track around Turn 4 was strewn with debris and the guardrail was badly damaged.

The replay showed that Kordil was being chased by Hauger, and Amaury made a mistake: his car lost stability on the kerb, he spun and the rear hit the barrier with such force that little remained of the suspension, diffuser and rear wing. Fortunately, the Belgian racer himself was not injured, but this incident only added to his dubious notoriety.

Before the second restart, Martin was in the lead, followed by Bortoleto, Fittipaldi and Hauger, with Antonelli returning to the track in fifth after a pit stop. Furthermore, he was on fresh soft tyres, and the team reminded him that this was his advantage over all his rivals who were still ahead of him.

On lap 26 the battle on the track resumed, Antonelli immediately ahead of Hauger and climbed to 4th position. In turn 3 Kimi overtook Fittipaldi and was already less than half a second behind Bortoleto. At the start of the next lap the Italian overtook him too, and only Martin’s car remained ahead.

Victor couldn’t hold out for long on hard tyres that were already a bit worn out, and at the start of the 28th lap the 17-year-old Mercedes protégé returned to the race leaders. How much faster he was than everyone else is shown by this fact: after just one lap Kimi increased the lead to almost five seconds!

It was clear that no one would be able to overtake him, but the others continued to solve their problems. For example, Bortoleto almost overtook Martin and Ferschor took 5th position from Hauger, after which he continued his attacks and also got ahead of Fittipaldi.

By this point, the countdown had already begun, as the allotted time for the race was coming to an end. The competitors clearly didn’t have time to complete all 37 laps, which only benefited Antonelli, who was on his way to his second win of the season.

On the final, 34th lap of the shortened distance, Ferkhsor Bortoleto attacked, and although the Brazilian resisted, Richard finished the job and climbed to third position. A podium finish would at least be some compensation for the frustration he felt yesterday when he was disqualified, robbed of his hard-won victory.

Kimi Antonelli crossed the finish line first, 12.5 seconds ahead of everyone else, excitedly thanking the Prema team for their work and support after being the sprint winner at the previous round at Silverstone, and today he won the feature race of the weekend.

Victor Martin finished 2nd, Richard Ferschor 3rd, and two Brazilians, Gabriel Bortoleto and Enzo Fittipaldi, finished 4th and 5th. But for the situation in the individual competition something else was more important: Hadjar, Aron and Maloney earned nothing today. Bortoleto was therefore ahead of the rider from the island of Barbados and climbed to 3rd place, and the first two kept their position with the same number of points, and this will remain until the next stage of the season, which will take place in a week in Spa.

It is also worth adding that Antonelli has moved up to 6th place in the personal classification, and is only 9 points away from the top five. If things continue like this, and Kimi continues to progress at the same rapid pace, he will be able to catch up with the leaders with a successful combination of circumstances, because there are still five stages to go, i.e. ten races. And a lot can still change.

The results are being prepared…