Prema’s Ollie Bearman resisted pressure from Pepe Marti to take his first win of the season in the Formula 2 sprint race at the Red Bull Ring
Ferrari F1 junior Bearman took the lead at the start from the inside of the front row, while Invicta Racing’s Kush Maini was slightly slow away from reversed-grid pole and found himself in a three-wide battle with Campos Racing’s Marti and AIX Racing’s Taylor Barnard on the run to turn three.
Slight contact left Marti with a damaged front-wing endplate, but he moved into second while Maini and Barnard ran off the road before rejoining in third and fourth.
The battle allowed Bearman to initially pull two-seconds clear, but Marti soon reduced the gap to little more than 0.5s. Maini kept pace behind, and Hitech GP’s points leader Paul Aron and Invicta’s Gabriel Bortoleto both passed Barnard before making it a five-way lead train. Barnard continued to lose places and eventually dropped out of the top 10.
Bearman withstood the pressure from behind throughout, and pulled away from Marti in the final two laps to take victory by 1.751s. Maini faded into the clutches of Aron and his team-mate Bortoleto in the closing stages and was shuffled down to fifth in the space of two corners.
Aron prevailed in a late battle with Bortoleto to finish third and extend his championship lead to 16 points over closest rival Isack Hadjar who made a poor start from fourth on the grid and failed to score in 13th.
Sunday’s feature race polesitter Dennis Hauger climbed from 10th to fifth, the MP Motorsport spending several laps battling AIX’s Joshua Duersken before making a final-lap pass on his team-mate Franco Colapinto who spun in down to 11th in the process. Jak Crawford benefitted from Colapinto’s misfortune to come home sixth, the DAMS driver having recovered from 14th on the grid.
Maini lost further ground and held off Duerksen for seventh at the chequered flag, while ART Grand Prix duo Zak O’Sullivan and Victor Martins both missed out on points despite both making up three places to ninth and 10th.
Featured image credit: Prema Team
