Official F1 Journal Formula 2 Sunday Round Up- Zandvoort

After a rained off Saturday Sprint race, that saw nobody score any points, all the drivers were pinning their chance for points on the feature race. Doohan was looking to continue his late season charge, Prema's Fredrik Vesti who started 3rd was looking to take the Championship lead back from former ART Racing team mate Theo Pourchaire plus Ollie Bearman & Victor Martins needed to score well to keep themselves in with a chance of the Championship. 
But Zandvoort had different ideas for all of them in what turned out to be an incredible race of 2 very different halves. 

Feature Race @ Zandvoort- Very Damp Track

The race was started with a rolling start due to very damp, challenging track conditions. The first driver to be caught out by these conditions was Jack Doohan who didn't even make the rolling start, spun at the last corner as Crawford lead the snake of cars around to start the race. Turn 1 was eventful for multiple drivers, Vesti lost the rear and spun mid turn 1 dropping him to last, Juan Manual Correa rear ended the Prema car of Bearman sending them both into the gravel and Bearman down to 14th( Correa later recieved a 10 second penalty for this incident)4 , with Martins going deep on the breaks and visiting the same gravel trap as the others and demoting himself to 15th and by turn 3 the Safety car was out for the stranded Virtuosi of Doohan to be recovered.  

Pourchaire had made good in all the chaos of the rolling start and got himself up to 6th and when the safety car came in on lap 3 and the 2nd rolling start took place it was a much cleaner 1st lap with just Iwasa going for a big move on Maini finding himself off the track at turn 1. Lap 6 and the pitstops start, the 4 cars who gambled on rain and started on the full wets were the first cars in, quickly followed by the dry tyre runners with degradation higher than expected. 
As the dry tyre runners started to pit Pourchaire saw his chance to gain another position by leap frogging Hadjar in the pits, which he did, despite almost crashing into the Redbull Academy driver at the pit entry.    

But that was the end of Pourchaire's luck and after the team got him ahead of Hadjar in the pits, Pourchaire put the car in the wall with quite a large crash after losing the rear end and being in an uncatchable 'tank slapper' until hitting the wall bringing out the 2nd Safety car of the day. But just as things really started to look like they were going in the favor of Pouchaire's closest championship rival Fredrik Vesti, he to crashed out, behind the safety car after the Prema team double stacked their cars with Vesti being the 2nd car and just a few corners out of the pit both rear tyres came off the car, dangerously close to the drivers behind. So by lap 8 3 championship contenders are out of the race and the man in the lead is Frenchman Clemant Novalak, followed by pole position man Jak Crawford and Carlin man Zane Maloney in 3rd. 

Racing resumed on lap 17 and a brilliant move around the outside of turn 1 by Maloney on Crawford put him up to 2nd, but it wouldn't be Formula 2 with out restart drama and after fighting from the restart Bearman & Martins came together at the exit of turn 3 were Martins ran Bearman off the road and into a wall, earning himself a 10 second grid penalty, the incident put Bearman out of the race while Martins continued in 5th.  

After a very exciting but safety car riddled first 18 laps of the race the 2nd half was a much more measured, calm showing from the remaining drivers, Novalak lead a brilliant race, always managing the gap to Maloney despite Maloney mounting a cracking campaign to go for his maiden win, on tyres that at best could be described as used, at worst blistered and dying but he just couldn't get close enough, especially with Crawford having a good go at getting 2nd place back from him but never getting close enough to make a move Crawford came home in 3rd at the chequered flag. 

​Local man Vershoor had a strong finish to catch up with the front 3 and finish 4th, Martins brought the car home in 5th but after his penalty was applied he finished 9th. Iwasa didnt have such a strong finish almost crashing out at the last corner of the last lap, by tapping the wall with the finish line in sight.
So the only man in the top 6 of the Championship standing to score any points this weekend was Martins, and with the races left in 2023 rapidly running out the hunt for points at Monza will be a desperate one. Its not possible to predict the next 10 seconds in Formula 2 let alone 10 days but we look forward to a seriously close battle for the title in the driver and team standings. 

Sunday Feature Race Result 

© FIA Formula 2

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1 NOV
            2 MAL
3 CRA
            4 VER
5 HAU
             6 HAD
7 FIT
             8 ACO
9 MAR
            10 JCO
11 STA
            12 NIS
13 IWA
            14 LEC
15 MAS 
            16 BOS
17 DAR
            18 MAI
DNF'S- BEA 
             VES
             POU
​             DOO

Joanna Blackmore 
Writer @ F1 Journal