Fornaroli takes the Feature Race win in Budapest in an Invicta 1-2

IMAGE: James Sutton / Getty Images

Leonardo Fornaroli takes his maiden Feature Race victory in Budapest just a month after his first win in Formula 2.

The Italian drove a brilliant race and came back from a penalty setback mid race to take the chequered flag and made this his third win in the Championship this year.

Roman Stanek came home in P2 to complete the 1-2 for Invicta and Jak Crawford took third place on the podium for the second time this weekend.

As it happened 

Rain overnight meant that the track was a bit damp and still had wet patches to put the drivers through their paces, however, the track was continuing to dry and would stay that way as the race gets underway.

The formation lap took place under the Safety Car as confirmed by Race Control and this meant we would be getting a rolling start for this Feature Race. 

​Green flag was waved and racing got underway and the opening lap was a clean one from all drivers with Stanek leading the pack round the Hungaroring. There were no changes to the top 10 on the first lap. Stanek led Fornaroli followed by Crawford, Browning and Duerksen to make up the top five.

Further down the order, Lap 2 saw Rafael Villagomez from Van Amersfoort make a great pass on Dino Beganovic to move himself up into 15th place. DRS had also been enabled this lap. 

By Lap 3, Stanek had pulled a two second gap to the Championship leader behind.

The following lap, Crawford looked to be struggling to keep up with the two front runners and was starting to be put under pressure by Williams Academy driver Luke Browning who was eyeing up the final podium spot.

Martins was having a difficult time out on track in the opening stages as he was running the alternative strategy. He had dropped to P14 by Lap 5 and all drivers on the alternative seemed to be having a hard time. 

Lap 6 brought our first DNF of the race as Amaury Cordeel pulled into the side of the road with what looked to be an engine failure just moments after he spun coming out of the final corner. This brought out the Virtual Safety Car due to where the car was parked and the marshalls set about moving the Rodin Motorsport car off the track.

The VSC ended at then end of Lap 7 and the green flag was shown to the drivers as racing got underway again. Fornaroli was on the charge at the start having brought the gap to his teammate down to just 1.6s.

Arvid Lindblad also made a great move on Lap 8 going past Joshua Duerksen and Oliver Goethe in quick succession to get himself up to fifth. Duerksen then dropped to P7 himself after running off the road at Turn 2 as Goethe kept hold of P6. 

It was not the ideal restart for yesterday's Sprint Race winner Pepe Marti - as he found himself losing two places to Mini and Verschoor at Turn 1 which dropped him down the order to P11.

The Virtual Safety Car was deployed for the second time in this race on Lap 10 after Victor Martins came to a halt out on track due to a mechanical issue leaving his car stuck out on track. The VSC remained out for a while despite Martins getting out of the car, as this prevented other drivers from being able to do their mandatory pit stops.

Once the ART car was moved, racing resumed again and Goethe went off the road going into Turn 13 on Lap 11 whilst trying to overtake Lindblad and ended up being passed by Duerksen and Dunne as a result leaving him in P8. 

A battle between Duerksen and Dunne followed with the Rodin Motorsport driver managing to pass the Duerksen for sixth place even after a big lock up from Dunne going into Turn 2. 

Yesterday's Sprint Race winner Pepe Marti was running well and was up to P9 by Lap 13 after passing Mini and Verschoorgoing into Turn 2. only to then make it passed Goethe later on in the lap at Turn 12 to put the Red Bull junior up into eight place. 

Lap 14 saw the start of the drivers on the Soft tyre choosing to make their mandatory stops with Browning being the highest in the order of drivers that came in. He was joined by Duerksen, Goethe and Mini who all chose to swap to the Medium tyres alongside the Brit. 

Stanek decided to lose track position and come in for his pitstop on Lap 15 followed by Crawford who had been running in P3. 

Fornaroli and Dunne followed suit a lap later with the Championship leader executing the overcoat well to end up back out on track ahead of Stanek. 

The drivers on the alternative strategy took up the lead of the race with the two Campos cars of Lindblad and Marti respectively out up front. Verschoor was now lapping in third followed by Dino Beganovic. Maini, Shields, and Miyata were also now up at the front of the pack having yet to make a pitstop. 

​Fornaoli, now ahead of his teammate Stanek, was sitting in P8 on Lap 19 and only a second ahead of his the Czech driver as he looked to try and get back ahead of the Italian. To make Fornaroli's job even harder, he was handed a 5-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane which gave him the task of trying to pull a gap of over 5 seconds to Stanek if he wanted to keep the lead by the end of the race. 

Lap 22 signaled the first of the drivers on the alternate strategy coming in to make their stop with the first of them being Richard Verschoor. He came back out on track behind Oliver Goethe who was running in P11. 

The two Campos drivers were the next to pit. Lindblad came in on Lap 23 after leading the race for seven laps with Marti following suit a lap later. They both struggled however to get temperature into their new tyres causing Lindblad to end up in P10 and Marti in P15. 

Crawford had closed in on Stanek and was looking to make the move to take P2. The DAMS Lucas Oil driver went for the overtake on Lap 28 but suffered a big lock up going into the corner allowing Stanek to shut the door on the American. 

Out in front, Fornaroli had done what he needed to do in order to cancel out the penalty and had pulled a gap of 4.9s to his teammate by Lap 29 with eight moire laps to increase that lead further. 

Various battles for position were starting to take place in the latter stages of the race as Luke Browning set a new best lap time and started to put pressure on Crawford who was just over a second and a half down the road but the Brit was running out of laps.

Miyata, the last of the drivers running the alternative strategy, made his pit stop on the second to last lap of the race which allowed Stanek and Crawford to be freed behind him but it was too late to do anything about Fornaroli's lead.

​Fornaroli took the chequered flag by some margin, crossing the line over seven seconds ahead of his teammate Roman Stanek who crossed the line to make it a Invicta 1-2.

Crawford crossed the line in P3 followed by Browning and Verschoor. Lindblad managed to hold on to P6 with Beganovic taking settling for P7. Goethe hung onto P8, Dunne came home in 9th with Marti taking the final points place - rounding out the top 10. 

Katie Shepherd 
Writer - F1 Journal