Isack Hadjar made it back to back feature race wins during todays race

Finlay McSporran
Published: 18:33, 19th May 2024

This win sees him close up on championship leader Maloney in the standings

Race Start

F3 champion and McLaren junior driver Gabriel Bortoleto would line up on pole position, however a slow start from him allowed Ferrari’s Oliver Bearman to take the lead. Bortoleto’s slow start saw him drop down to fourth as Hadjar and Durksen moved up to the podium. There were no incidents on lap one as every driver made it through cleanly unlike yesterday.

Mid Race

On lap 7, race leader Bearman came into the pits to get rid of the supersoft rubber. However disaster struck as his Prema car stalled when leaving the pit box, his team having to manually restart the car costing him valuable time. When they finally did, it stalled once again with Bearman finally emerging out of the pit lane right at the rear of the field.

This incident promoted Hadjar to the net race lead, ahead of Bortoleto and Durksen with Cordeel staying out on the medium tyre in first.

Further back, championship leader Zane Maloney had now made his stop and was being help up by Roman Stanek. Maloney just couldn’t find a way past the Trident and before long there was a train of cars behind him waiting to pounce.

The first of these drivers was Jak Crawford, who passed Maloney on lap 21 before dispatching Stanek on lap 25.

On lap 31 race leader Cordell came in to make his stop, however when he put his foot down and left his box the right rear tyre came flying off the car, ruining what could’ve been his first podium in F2.

The loose wheel ended up hitting one of the Campos mechanics up ahead who was working on Pepe Marti’s car. Amid the confusion, the mechanic clearly made mistake as when Marti went to leave the box his tyre fell off as well, taking them both out of the race.

Final Laps

Back on track, pole sitter Bortoleto had recovered from his slow start and was now within DRS range of race leader Hadjar. But the Frenchman was proving difficult to pass and Bortoleto eventually had to settle for 2nd as Hadjar took the flag in first place.

Behind them Joshua Durksen for AIX racing came home third to secure his and his teams first podium in Formula 2, beating Kimi Antionelli who finished 4th for Prema, the Italian team still yet to achieve a podium this season despite having arguably the strongest driver pairing on the grid.

Hadjar’s win sees him move up to 3rd in the drivers standings, just 9 points behind championship leader Zane Maloney who after being held up by Stanek for most of the race finished 11th and out of the points while his closest rival Paul Aron finished in 6th place , cutting Maloney’s lead to just 5 points.

Race Results

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Isack Hadjar	Campos Racing	54m01.509s
2	Gabriel Bortoleto	Virtuosi Racing	+0.569
3	Joshua Duerksen	AIX Racing	+13.736
4	Andrea Kimi Antonelli	Prema	+18.034
5	Franco Colapinto	MP Motorsport	+18.489
6	Paul Aron	Hitech GP	+18.815
7	Jak Crawford	DAMS	+20.737
8	Juan Manuel Correa	Trident	+21.240
9	Victor Martins	ART Grand Prix	+28.364
10	Richard Verschoor	Trident	+33.507
11	Zane Maloney	Rodin Motorsport	+34.107
12	Dennis Hauger	MP Motorsport	+34.346
13	Zak O’Sullivan	ART Grand Prix	+37.657
14	Kush Maini	Virtuosi Racing	+37.957
15	Ritomo Miyata	Rodin Motorsport	+38.402
16	Rafael Villagomez	Van Amersfoort Racing	+42.357
17	Enzo Fittipaldi	Van Amersfoort Racing	+43.055
18	Roman Stanek	Trident	+43.575
19	Ollie Bearman	Prema	+44.017
20	Taylor Barnard	AIX Racing	+44.786
Ret	Amaury Cordeel	Hitech GP
Ret	Pepe Marti	Campos Racing
Fastest lap: Martins, 1m29.580s Championship standings: 1 Maloney 68   2 Aron 63   3 Hadjar 59   4 Hauger 41   5 Bortoleto 36   6 Antonelli 36   7 Colapinto 34   8 Maini 34   9 Fittipaldi 32   10 Crawford 32

Next up

With the title battle heating up, Formula 2 heads to Monaco next week for round 5 of the championship.