Official F1 Journal Formula 2 Thursday Round Up- Bahrain

27/2/2024

Welcome to our 1st Formula 2 Round Up of the 2024 season. We begin the season in Bahrain with the Formula 1 with some very familiar names and some highly anticipated newcomers who are as eager to show their skill as the veterans of Formula 2 like Bearman & Hauger.
New rules for Qualifying will see any driver who stops on track or brings out a flag unable to continue in the session and their fastest time so far will be deleted. These much harsher penalties could have a really profound affect on such a tight championship and could make or break a championship challenge.
Lets look at how the first day of the season went for the Formula 2 boys.

Practice

It was a slow start to the session with only 4 cars lapping for the 1st 10 minutes with Hauger, Colapinto(who moved up to F2 from F3 this year), Marti & Hadjar the only cars to set times till the rest of the field joined them with 31 minutes to go in the session.
It was very calm, consistent running for all until new Prema driver Miyata lost the rear out of Turn 1 and watched his rear end go round on himself after getting a bit aggressive on the accelerator but carried on without any damage to the car(maybe just the tyres).

2024 Rookies

As the yellow flags flew Bearman and Antonelli completed their laps unaffected by the incident in sector 1 putting themselves 5th & 8th.
F3 2023 champion and Mclaren backed Brazilian driver Bortoleto put his car upto 4th in his first session in Formula 2, while F2 veteran Zane Maloney went top of the times.
Zane had a great pre season test, finishing the 1st day of wet running 2nd and topping the 2nd & 3rd days of testing.

Durksen(rookie) brought out a brief yellow flag going wide at turn 13 and with 15 to go we started to see the top 10 times change rapidly, Martins went 7th, Fittipaldi was up to 6th, Bortoleto was pushed down to 9th and Championship favorite Bearman was down in 18th.
Miyata put his car 2nd fastest, as Hadjar went fastest with 10 minutes to go and we started to see a more frantic pace about all the cars trying to get their qualifying simulations in and practice starts at the pit exit. F2 veteran Bearman stalled his car at the pit exit losing time while the Prema team came to restart his car so he could complete the session. Aron went deep at turn 4 after a rear lock up but manged to carry on despite losing that time to track limits.
In the closing minutes we started to see alot more mistake, Cordeal went to deep into turn 14 and just managed to keep his car out of the wall.

Practice Result

1 HAD 2 COL
3 MAL 4 MIY
5 HAU 6 CRA
7 MART 8 O'SU
9 FIT 10 BOR
11 VMA 12 MAI
13 JCO 14 ARO
15 ANT 16 VER
17 DUR 18 BAR
19 BEA 20 ACO
21STA 22 VIL

The session ended with a surprisingly few incidents considering all the rookie drivers and the new car all the drivers are learning to drive together and we looked forward to the afternoon Qualifying session to see how they shake out for the Sprint and Feature races for the 1st race of the season.

Qualifying

The session began with all but the 2 Campos drivers, Hadjar & Marti going straight out. F2 is notorious for yellow and Red flags in a Qualifying session so its important to get a banker lap in before you go for an absolute pace lap and today was no different as we saw almost everyone going out to set a time early.
The first push pace laps were so close, Hauger crossed the line first with Fittipaldi(paying tribute to great uncle Wilson Fittipaldi who passed away this week on his helmet) slotted into 2nd, Bearman could only manage 9th as he crossed the line, Maloney went 3rd fastest till he was beaten by 2023 F3 champion Bortoleto

Jak Crawford breifly brought out a yellow flag after a spin at turn 1 but managed to keep the car going and carry on but rejoined the track at turn 2 unsafely was under investigation for it.
Campos chose to run their cars out of sequence to everyone else and their drivers Hadjar and Marti put there cars 1st and 2nd before pitting to join the others for the final runs of the session.

The final flying runs began with 6 minutes on the clock, Fittipaldi is the first man to begin his lap in his Van Ammerfoort car, Hauger went purple in sector 1 in his hunt for pole, Maloney was purple in sector 2 as Fittipaldi goes top, and was then beaten by Maloney and Hauger, Miyata then takes 3rd from him as well.

Hadjar then went top only to be beaten by Indian driver Maini, who's team mate then took 2nd giving Invicta a provisional 1-2 for the 1st race of the season, Maloney attempted a 2nd lap on his tyres but couldn't improve and remained in 4th. Barnard however did make the 2nd lap work and took reverse grid pole for the Sprint race tomorrow. But it was Kush Maini who took Pole with 3 minutes left on the clock with a time that just couldn't be beaten and his team mate, Mclaren academy driver Bortoleto held onto 2nd to give Invicta the feature race 1-2. Maini also becomes the first leader of the 2024 F2 Championship with his 2 points for Pole position. The shock of the day is the Prema boys being down in 18th and 19th, hopefully they can improve on race pace and challenge for points tomorrow in the Sprint race.