The American driver claimed his second victory in F2, leading home a double podium for the Dams team.

Finlay McSporran
Published: 14:41, 23nd June 2024

Race Report

After qualifying 5th, problems for Antionelli on the formation lap forced him to start from the pit lane. When the race did get underway pole-sitter Aron would get a good launch, allowing him to easily hold the lead into turn 1 ahead of Crawford and Colapinto. Further back, contact between Hauger and sprint race winner Martins sent both of them into the gravel and out of the race, with Redbull junior Marti forced to go off in avoidance which lost him a handful of places.

Racing would resume on lap 4 and with the soft rubber quickly fading it wasn’t long until we saw our first pit stops. On lap 10 Crawford came in from second to try and undercut race leader Aron. He would come in 4 laps later, emerging back on track ahead of the Dams. However, with warmer tyres Crawford passed Aron at turn 3 to take the net race lead.

It wasn’t long before Aron had fired his tyres up and by lap 16 he was within DRS range of Crawford, however a snap of oversteer at the final corner saw him saw him go off the track and into the gravel, re-joining behind Bortoleto and Colapinto.

With Crawford now comfortably in lead the battle for 2nd place intensified with Colapinto getting passed Bortoleto for a net P2. With 10 laps to go, the other Dams of Correa pitted from the race lead to go onto the soft rubber, putting him in 9th as he came out the pit lane, while up ahead Aron had now passed Bortoleto for P3.

With fresher tyres, Correa was now on the move, passing Hajar, Bortoleto and Aron to get back on the podium after being disqualified from a P3 during yesterdays sprint race.

Another driver on the alternative strategy was Kush Maini, who after pitting late on for the soft rubber was now making his way back up the order and as he started the final lap he was in 7th place behind teammate Bortoleto.

Maini tried to overtake his teammate into turn one, going around the outside of Bortoleto who lost the rear and made contact with his teammate damaging his front wing, but thankfully both managed to continue.

Out in front, Crawford crossed the line to take his second win in Formula 2, with Colapinto coming home in second and Juan Manuel Correa in 3rd to make it a double podium for the Dams team.

This win sees Crawford move up to 4th in the drivers standing while a P4 for Paul Aron means that he continues to lead the championship ahead of Isack Hajar and Zane Maloney. A double podium for Dams means they now move up to 6th in the teams standings ahead of Prema who had another nightmare weekend with neither drivers scoring a single point over the three days.

Race Results

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Jak Crawford	DAMS	59m46.800s
2	Franco Colapinto	MP Motorsport	+1.400s
3	Juan Manuel Correa	DAMS	+5.820s
4	Paul Aron	Hitech GP	+11.486s
5	Isack Hadjar	Campos Racing	+14.720s
6	Kush Maini	Virtuosi Racing	+19.333s
7	Gabriel Bortoleto	Virtuosi Racing	+20.400s
8	Zane Maloney	Rodin Motorsport	+22.692s
9	Amaury Cordeel	Hitech GP	+24.442s
10	Pepe Marti	Campos Racing	+24.919s
11	Enzo Fittipaldi	Van Amersfoort Racing	+29.155s
12	Andrea Kimi Antonelli	Prema	+35.513s
13	Ritomo Miyata	Rodin Motorsport	+35.955s
14	Ollie Bearman	Prema	+37.470s
15	Zak O’Sullivan	ART Grand Prix	+45.073s
16	Rafael Villagomez	Van Amersfoort Racing	+47.273s
17	Roman Stanek	Trident	+1m03.092s
18	Richard Verschoor	Trident	+2 laps
Ret	Joshua Duerksen	AIX Racing
Ret	Taylor Barnard	AIX Racing
Ret	Victor Martins	ART Grand Prix
Ret	Dennis Hauger	MP Motorsport
Fastest lap: Antonelli, 1m27.918s Championship standings: 1 Aron 100   2 Hadjar 91   3 Maloney 73   4 Crawford 62   5 Bortoleto 60   6 Hauger 56   7 Colapinto 56   8 Maini 50   9 Antonelli 48   10 O’Sullivan 40

Next up- The action continues next week as Formula 2 heads to to the Redbull ring for round 7/14 at the Austrian grand prix.

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Formula 2

Road to F1

Spanish Grand Prix