Sunday’s Formula 2 race started slightly later than planned due to delayed repairs to barriers damaged during the Porsche Carrera Cup Middle East round. But the participants in this youth series were even lucky, because the F1 Academy race for women had to be canceled completely.
Starting from pole position was Estonian Paul Aron, a Hitech driver who experienced an important event in his career this weekend: he became Alpine F1’s reserve driver. It seems this only increased his motivation, and Paul carried out yesterday’s sprint in a very aggressive manner, finishing fifth after starting from 9th position.
Gabriel Bortoleto also started the race from the front row, leading the individual rankings with a lead of just 2.5 points, and of course trying to widen this very small gap. He managed to start better than the Estonian and entered the first corner first.
The start was basically without complications, except that on the first lap two Prema riders, Oliver Berman and Kimi Antonelli, almost collided. But everything turned out fine, and both continued to fight at the end of the top ten: the Briton took 8th, his partner – 9th.
Bortoleto’s attempts to open a noticeable gap on Aron have so far failed, with Paul trailing the Brazilian’s yellow Dallara by less than half a second. But it is also worth noting that at this stage of the race, Dino Beganovich was in third place, having only made his debut in Formula 2 this weekend. But the Swede was already pushed back by Victor Martin.
On lap 4, Berman, Antonelli and a few other riders passed Kush Maini, who appeared to be in trouble as the Indian continued to lose ground.
Bortoleto took the lead and managed to gain over a second ahead of Aron, but Isaac Hadjar, the Brazilian’s main rival in the battle for the title, was only tenth after a poor start. However, when Jack Crawford was the first to make an early pit stop on lap 7, he moved up one position.
On the 8th lap, Aron made an attempt to stay ahead of Bortoleto due to tactics and also turned into the pits. Four more riders followed his example. At this point, Bortoleto received instructions from the team to accelerate and then also make a pit stop. The Invicta Racing mechanics were ready to accept him, but at that moment Kimi Antonelli flew off the track and got stuck in the gravel.
This happened because the steering rod of his car was broken – when Antonelli left the pits, Richard Ferschor crashed into him. The Dutchman eventually had to return to the pits due to a puncture, but at least, unlike Kimi, was able to continue the race. Ferskhor was subsequently fined for this.
Other significant events took place on the track: just as Bortoleto was about to enter the pits, the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) mode was introduced, preventing a pit stop from being performed. Gabriel was about to pit, but turned back onto the track at the last minute. But at the same time he drove around the cone marking the entrance to the pit lane on the right, and this is a violation of the rules.
He was only able to make a pit stop when the VSC mode was replaced by the departure of a real safety car. As a result, the stewards gave him a 5-second time penalty, and after his pit stop he only returned to the track in 6th. But at one point he overdid it, when the tires were not yet properly warmed up, he started a battle for position with Pepe Marti, but flew off the track and lost another place.
Incidents on track continued to occur after another Rafael Villagomez car stopped on track, forcing the safety car to be released again.
Before the restart, the top six looked like this: Berman was in the lead, followed by Joshua Duerksen, Kush Maini, Max Esterson, Luke Browning and Pepe Marti. But none of them had yet pitted and the virtual leader could be considered Bortoleto, who was still in seventh place. Paul Aron followed him and was probably hatching plans for an attack.
The restart took place on the 16th lap and Durksen unexpectedly overtook Berman before the start-finish line, forcing him to give back the position, and as he did so, Maini and Browning were also ahead of him.
Bortoleto, for whom it was important to win the race at all costs, took a big risk, but came out in a very hard way and was already fifth. Aron followed closely behind him.
Retirements and eliminations continued, most notably out of contention was Viktor Martin, who had a very real chance of winning points, but his car had damaged suspension. Contact with an opponent spun Zane Mallonee and although he was able to return to the court, he was only in last position. Overall, the driver from the island of Barbados failed to distinguish himself in his last Formula 2 race.
Bortoleto stayed ahead of Browning and moved up to 4th position, then literally shouted over the radio to the team to tell Maini to let him through. Because five penalty seconds would be added to Gabriel’s result, there was a high risk that he would lose the lead in the individual competition, because Isaac Hadjar already finished fifth.
On the 26th lap, Bortoleto Durksen got ahead in a dashing and very risky way, taking 2nd position and clearly improving in an attempt to increase the lead over the rest of the peloton as much as possible. At the end of the same lap, Berman, who had been leading until that point, finally went to the pits and the track for Gabriel was clear.
Hadjar was still in fourth place, losing about four seconds to the leader. The question was whether Bortoleto could increase the lead to five seconds with just a few laps to go to remain the race winner and earn maximum points.
Going into the final lap, the lead over Hajar was four and a half seconds, but Isaac also worked hard to stay within the five-second lead. And yet the task proved impossible for Gabriel: he crossed the finish line first, but immediately lost two places and ended up on the third line of the race protocol. He was only 0.4 seconds short!
And the victory went to Paul Aron, and this is his first achievement in Formula 2. Isaac Hajjar took second place, putting him in the lead of the personal classification, albeit with a minimum lead of 0.5 points. The fate of the title would not be decided until Abu Dhabi anyway, but French driver Campos will start the final weekend of the season leading the championship.
The results are being prepared…
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
