Formula 2: Theo Purscher wins at Imola

Est Jüri Vips, who plays for the Hitech Grand Prix team, has already taken two podiums this year, but in today’s race at Imola on Sunday he started from pole and this was a great chance to win. The mood before the start was quite combative, but at the same time he made it clear that he intends to act wisely and avoid excessive risk.

Perhaps that disappointed him: he started extremely unsuccessfully – either he was too careful, or he let the drive wheels slip, but immediately lost three positions. And in a surprising way, Roy Nissany broke through among the leaders and started sixth overall.

But there were other events worth noting at the start: the track was not shared by Jack Duane, who started the race in third, and Dennis Hauger, who came out of 5th position. There was hard contact between the cars, both fell out immediately – if Duane managed to reach the pits, albeit with a broken suspension, the Prema team car in Red Bull’s livery would stop at the side of the road.

The safety car drove away. The top five before the restart looked like this: Nissan led the way, followed by Ralph Boschung, Ayumu Iwasa, Vips and Theo Purscher.

The restart went smoothly, but interesting in its own way, as the top four immediately started fighting for positions, and it looked like there were inevitable reshuffles, but they didn’t.

But literally after a circle at the exit of the 6th corner, Vips overdid it, did not calculate the speed, his car ended up on the curb and then on the grass, but the Est did not want to slow down, he tried to keep the situation under control. But he couldn’t, and it all ended with a U-turn, which flew off the track and a car wreck got stuck in the gravel.

The safety car came out again, and more than half of the riders took advantage of this by going into the pit lane for fresh tires even though they were only 8 laps down. But the moment was too good for the mandatory pit stop, so Jehan Daruvala, who did not go to the pits, took the lead.

After the restart, Prema was behind Indian driver Marcus Armstrong, yesterday’s race winner, and was chased by Liam Lawson, another New Zealand representative. But less than a second behind him was Felipe Drugovic.

However, the entire first nine hadn’t been in the pits yet, so the riders preferred to maintain a fairly high pace on the one hand, witness the best lap of Daruvala on the other, while refraining from any aggressive actions, realizing that this was accompanied by increased tire wear. Admittedly, Marino Sato soon managed to get ahead of Jake Hughes, moving into fifth position while taking away the best lap of the race from Daruwala.

With the first half of the distance lagging, Lawson got up and started aggressively pushing his compatriot, Marcus Armstrong, but he added and the interval between their cars increased slightly again.

Meanwhile, Daruvala was already far enough away from his pursuers and was moving forward almost three seconds. He still had one pit stop to go, however, while Roy Nissany, who led the race right after the start, remained in 10th position on fresher tires.

And then events took a distinctly unexpected turn: Nissan, exiting the 18th, penultimate corner, failed to keep the car on the track and crashed at full speed into the right side of the bumper, left with no nose fairing and front suspension. This happened just before entering the pit lane, so the Israeli was already reaching him on three wheels.

Race management announced a virtual safety car mode, which prohibits cars from entering the pit lane because the entire entrance to it was littered with the wreckage of the DAMS car.

With ten laps remaining before the end of the race, the battle resumed. When the pit lane opened, Lawson went for new tyres, followed by Hughes, Richard Fershhor and Daruwala a lap later. Although Jehan managed to get back on track ahead of Lawson, both lost a lot of positions and the chances of returning to the leading group were minimal.

Armstrong was even less likely to do so, as when he entered the pits, the mechanics had been working on his car longer than necessary, and he did not return to the track until 16th.

At this stage in the race, Drugovich took the lead, who had one more pit stop to go, and it looks like he wasn’t going to pit just yet. But several riders who were already there were a bit behind him and Logan Sargent started to attack Ralph Boschung, who was in fifth place, and was soon able to get ahead of the Swiss.

However, the American made a mistake, so Boschung recaptured his position and Sargent, on the other hand, finished ninth. The struggle on the track escalated but was immediately neutralized after Lawson’s accident, who crashed the car exiting Turn 13.

The safety car took off for the third time, although there were only three laps to go before the finish. Drugovic eventually went into the pits, returned to the track in tenth and Theo Purscher took the lead. As expected, there was no time to evacuate Lawson’s wrecked car and the race ended behind the safety car. More precisely, Bernd Maylander managed to enter the pitlane before the last corner, the drivers accelerated and the French driver from the French ART team was the first to see the checkered flag, which he was very happy about, judged by the solemn cries on the radio.

So Theo Purscher took his third win in Formula 2 and led the personal standings of the series, although his lead over Drugovic is only two points.

Enzo Fittipaldi finished second and for a representative of the glorious Brazilian racing family this is the first podium in the youth championship. By the way, the first to congratulate him on his success was his older brother Pietro, the backup driver of Haas F1.

Third place was taken by Ralph Boschung, followed by Clement Novalak and Ayumu Iwasa.

The next stage of the season will have to wait almost a month: it will be held from May 21-22 in Barcelona.

Race results