DAMS’s Ayuma Iwasa took a maiden FIA Formula 2 victory ahead of ART duo Theo Pourchaire and Frederik Vesti in Sunday’s feature race at Paul Ricard.
Iwasa moved ahead of polesitter Logan Sargeant at the start, but it was Virtuosi’s Jack Doohan that led into the first corner thanks to a great launch from fourth.
Pourchaire also made a good start from sixth, but only made up one place after being squeezed off track by his team-mate.
Iwasa dived inside Doohan at the chicane to take the lead, before two separate incidents on the opening lap triggered the only safety car period of the race.
Virtuosi’s Marino Sato spun out at the chicane, while Hitech GP’s Marcus Armstrong also retired after contact with David Beckmann before being collected by Prema’s Dennis Hauger, who was forced to pit with damage.
Iwasa pulled out almost a two-second lead at the resumption before pitting on lap 15 of 30.
He moved back to the front four laps later once everyone else had pitted, with his advantage having grown to over 4s.
Pourchaire took advantage of any early pitstop to move into second, with Doohan being passed by the Frenchman after being slightly delayed during his stop.
Sargeant’s race came to an early end during his tyre change when a clutch failure left his Carlin machine stranded.
Doohan tried to reclaim the position from Pourchaire with a lunge into the chicane, but spun and dropped to fourth behind Vesti. The Australian was then caught and passed by championship leader Felipe Drugovich, who had saved his soft compound tyres for the second stint.
As Iwasa pulled further clear to win by over 8s from Pourchaire, Drugovich closed to within 0.3s of Vesti but had to settle for fourth.
Doohan came home fifth ahead of Carlin’s Liam Lawson, while Prema’s Jehan Daruvala made a late charge on soft tyres to finish seventh.
MP Motorsport’s Clement Novalak climbed from 15th to 8th, having run the soft tyre for 23 laps following an early pitstop.
Roy Nissany was ninth for DAMS despite serving a 5s penalty for going off track and gaining an advantage. Enzo Fittipaldi bounced back from a five-place penalty to recover from 19th to 10th for Charouz.
Trident’s Richard Verschoor retired from the top ten at the start of the last lap with a car issue.
Featured image credit: @formula2 official
