Campos Racing’s Pepe Marti won Formula 2’s final sprint race of the season at Yas Marina, while his team-mate Isack Hadjar lost ground to Gabriel Bortoleto in the title battle.
Marti took his first F2 victory by 2.2 seconds ahead of Invicta Racing’s Bortoleto, who benefitted from a tricky opening lap for chief rival Hadjar to extend his championship lead to 5.5 points ahead of Sunday’s deciding contest.
Hitech GP’s Amaury Cordeel lined up from reversed-grid pole ahead of AIX Racing’s Joshua Duersken, but the pair were beaten to turn one at the start by Marti who climbed from the grid’s second row into the lead.
Hadjar made a good getaway initially to move ahead of DAMS driver Dino Beganovic before the first corner where he found himself sandwiched between Rodin Motorsport’s Ritomo Miyata and the fast-starting Kush Maini, the latter climbing from eighth to snatch fourth on the inside. Light contact resulted in Hadjar suffering front-wing endplate damage and slipping to 11th, while Invicta’s Maini prevailed in another three-wide battle with Cordeel and Duerksen a couple of corners later into second.
Bortoleto made up four places to fifth during the first-lap exchanges, and the Sauber F1-bound driver picked off Duerksen, Cordeel and then Maini over the next few laps into second. Marti, meanwhile, had built a four-second lead by lap seven and although that gap was halved by Bortoleto, the Red Bull junior remained ahead until the finish to become the 18th different winner of the season.
Hitech’s Paul Aron made up ground from seventh on the grid to finish 9s behind Bortoleto in third, but it was not enough to keep his title hopes alive. Cordeel initially reclaimed third from Maini on lap seven but, after losing out to Aron with eight laps to go, then locked up and spun around Duerksen as the pair contested fourth. Duerksen retired in the pitlane as a result, while Cordeel was handed a 10s penalty which dropped him from seventh to 14th at the finish.
Prema’s Ollie Bearman profited from the incident to move up to fourth, but a 5s penalty for exceeding track limits demoted him to fifth at the chequered flag behind Beganovic. Hadjar recovered from his first-lap troubles to run behind Beganovic, but he was unable to find a way by and eventually came home sixth.
Miyata was denied seventh at the finish by a 10s penalty for an early collision with ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins and was classified 12th. Martins finished a lap down in 20th following the incident, but is due to start from pole in Sunday’s feature race, while his team-mate Luke Browning finished seventh.
MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor took the final point for eighth ahead of DAMS’ Jak Crawford and MP’s Oliver Goethe. Reigning FIA Formula 3 champion Leonardo Fornaroli was 11th on his F2 debut for Rodin, while Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli sat out the race on doctor’s advise due to illness but is hoping to contest the feature race.
Featured image credit: @Formula2 on X
