Formula 2: Armstrong wins third of the season

Qualifying in Zandvoort was won by individual classification leader Felipe Drugovic who added a few points to his already solid lead, but started tenth in Saturday’s sprint as Formula 2 practice reverses starting order. .

Clement Novalak, the Brazilian’s MP Motorsport teammate, started the race from pole position, but fast and experienced Hitech GP drivers Markus Armstrong and Juri Vips started second and third, so an interesting fight was to be expected in the first corner. .

We can say it happened because Armstrong started better than Novalak, accelerated more confidently and took the lead straight away. In addition, he even managed to create a small hole. Behind him, Vips also tried to attack Novalak, but failed. On the contrary, the Estonian was first Dennis Hauger before and then Liam Lawson. In addition, the struggle with the New Zealander in the course of the game was somewhat contact, but there were no particular problems.

Already at the start of the second lap, after a failed overtake attempt, Theo Purcher flew off the track – the Frenchman, who is second in the individual standings, has no luck this weekend. He was able to return to the track, but rolled back to the end of the pack.

He wasn’t the only one to make mistakes in the early laps – in the same first corner, Jehan Daruwala and Ollie Caldwell had issues. The Briton even damaged the car because he was unable to avoid a collision with crash barriers, after which he had to return to the pits to replace the front wing.

The nature of the narrow and winding Dutch track is not conducive to overtaking, and after the first laps the picture stabilized, the cars stretched out in a long line and for quite some time no one tried to attack. The same Drugovich remained in tenth position, from which he started.

Admittedly, on lap 11, Vips, who was of course offended that he had lost a few positions at the start, tried as close as possible to Lawson’s car, which was in front, and stayed behind him for only half a second, but it looked not looking forward to taking a more decisive action.

On lap 13 Caldwell retired – the effects of contact with the wall were affected, but at least he rode last.

Less than half the distance to the finish, Marcus Armstrong remained in the lead, while the interval between his car and Novalak’s Dallara, the closest pursuer, was no more than a second and a half. In turn, Hauger was about the same distance behind the Dutchman and Lawson was the first to use DRS, but this didn’t help either – Liam didn’t quite qualify for the podium either.

But Jehan Daruwala managed to overtake daringly: on braking he was ahead of Marino Sato and even slightly blocked the wheels, but it was a battle only for 16th position.

Even those riders, for whom literally every point earned was important, preferred not to take any chances. For example, Jack Duane was slightly behind Logan Sargent in the individual standings and he would of course like to be ahead of him, but now he was a second behind the American’s car and didn’t even try to attack. The only consolation for him would be an extra bonus point for best lap – Duane was the author at this stage in the race – but things could change in the remaining five laps.

And it really changed, as the Australian’s best lap was driven by Drugovich, who followed him.

On lap 25, Jüri Vips made a braking error, Richard Vershor tried to take advantage of this, but the Est held his position. Daruwala made a mistake on the same lap – his car reversed, but he also stayed in 16th position. But on the next lap, yellow flags appeared due to the departure of Tatiana Calderon, who drove last.

She failed to hold the car in the second corner, after which she got stuck in the gravel and the safety car drove onto the track. The peloton gathered, the gaps were leveled – at the same time there was very little left for the finish.

The safety car returned to the pits at the end of the penultimate lap and it turned out that the riders had to finish the sprint at a distance of 4,259 km.

Armstrong restarted confidently and maintained the lead – overall the entire top five stayed in place and only Ayumu Iwasa managed to get ahead of Fershhor and climb to 6th place.

A minute later, Marcus crossed the finish line first and scored his third win of the season. However, he cannot boast of stable results and is not even in the top ten.
Second place went to Clement Novalak – this is generally his first podium in Formula 2; Dennis Hauger finished third.

Drugovic remained the author of the fastest lap and his lead over Purcher in the individual standings grew to 46 points, as the Frenchman reached the finish line last today. And on Sunday, Felipe will start the race from pole position, and his job will be to start normally and not make mistakes over the distance, because judging by the nature of the battle during the sprint, few people risk losing to overtake on this circuit.

Race results