Verschoor wins dramatic baku feature race

The Dutch driver converted pole position into victory ahead of Victor Martins and Kimi Antonelli

Finlay McSporran
Published: 16:35, 13th September 2024

P4 for Gabriel Bortoleto sees him become the 4th different championship leader this season.

But the big story today was the huge crash that occurred at turn 1.

Race Report

Thankfully no-one was harmed in the crash however it meant that the session would be red flagged for a decent while.

The crash happened when Kush Maini’s Invicta stalled on the grid and was collected by Oliver Goethe, leaving Pepe Marti with nowhere to go as his Campos was sent into the air and rolled over into the barriers, thankfully landing the right way up.

With the drivers safely out of their cars and the damage cleared the race would get back underway with just 27 minutes on the clock, as their wasn’t enough time to complete the full 29 laps due to the red flag delay.

The race resumed with a rolling start and it was Verschoor who lead them away with a good launch to keep himself ahead of Antonelli in second. Kimi wouldn’t stay there for long however, as the ART of Victor Martins breezed past him on the next lap and now had his sights set firmly on race leader Verschoor.

Despite the Dutch drivers best efforts he just couldn’t stop the Frenchman, who took the race lead with 21 minutes left.

A few minutes later and the top 3 all came in for their mandatory stop, with Martins dropping down to 3rd due to a slow stop which allowed Verschoor to inherit the net race lead.

Zane Maloney was in the next lap and re-joined just ahead of Antonelli in what was a net P2. However Maloney was on cold tyres which immediately put him under pressure from Antonelli who tried to go round the outside at turn 3. As they approached the corner a lock-up for Maloney sent him into the run off as he made contact with Antonelli, allowing Martins to slip past both of them and chase down Verschoor.

As the clock ticked down so to did the gap between Martins and Verschoor, as the Frenchman got closer and closer every lap and with just 5 minutes to go he was on the cusp of DRS range. However he wouldn’t get the chance to challenge Verschoor as Gabriele Mini found the wall with just 3 minutes and 40 seconds left to bring out the safety car.

With the clock now at zero the race would end under the safety car with Richard Verschoor finally winning a race with no threat of being disqualified later on. He would be joined on the podium by Alpine’s Victor Martins and Kimi Antonelli who finished second and third respectively.

P4 for Bortoleto means that he is the new championship leader as Isack Hajar failed to score for the second weekend in a row. Yesterday’s winner Joshua Duerksen finished 5th ahead of Aron and Browning who took his first points in the championship with P7 ahead of Crawford, Hauger and Mansell who rounded out the points.

Feature Race Classification

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Richard Verschoor	Trident	1h10m08.415s
2	Victor Martins	ART Grand Prix	+0.333s
3	Andrea Kimi Antonelli	Prema	+0.567s
4	Gabriel Bortoleto	Invicta Racing	+0.819s
5	Joshua Duerksen	AIX Racing	+1.002s
6	Paul Aron	Hitech GP	+1.212s
7	Luke Browning	ART Grand Prix	+1.351s
8	Jak Crawford	DAMS	+1.468s
9	Dennis Hauger	MP Motorsport	+1.910s
10	Christian Mansell	Trident	+2.163s
11	Enzo Fittipaldi	Van Amersfoort Racing	+2.653s
12	Amaury Cordeel	Hitech GP	+3.348s
13	Ritomo Miyata	Rodin Motorsport	+3.391s
14	Isack Hadjar	Campos Racing	+4.127s
15	Zane Maloney	Rodin Motorsport	+42.182s
Ret	Gabriele Mini	Prema
Ret	Juan Manuel Correa	DAMS
Ret	Kush Maini	Invicta Racing
Ret	Oliver Goethe	MP Motorsport
Ret	Rafael Villagomez	Van Amersfoort Racing
Ret	Pepe Marti	Campos Racing
Ret	Niels Koolen	AIX Racing