Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto clinched the Formula 2 championship in the Yas Marina decider, while Joshua Duerksen scored his first feature race win.
Bortoleto headed into Sunday’s finale leading Isack Hadjar by a reduced margin of 4.5 points after Paul Aron’s disqualification from Saturday’s sprint race promoted Hadjar up one position in that contest.
With Hadjar starting directly behind his main rival in third for the feature race, the scene was set for potentially winner-takes-all showdown, but the title was effectively decided as soon as the lights went out.
Bortoleto immediately snatched the lead while ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins was slow away from pole, but Hadjar was left stranded on the grid. With his title hopes realistically over, Hadjar joined the race from the pitlane just in front of Bortoleto but almost two laps down.
Kush Maini helped his Invicta team-mate break clear on the opening lap by climbing to second and then holding off Campos driver Pepe Marti.
AIX Racing’s Duerksen swept past the squabbling duo lap six but ran wide at turn nine and slipped back to fourth, and he then followed Maini into the pits for his mandatory stop, with Martins doing the same.
Duerksen briefly dropped behind Martins on the next lap after running wide and bouncing over a kerb before using his DRS to blast back ahead. They soon both passed Bortoleto, who had rejoined from his pitstop ahead before going off the circuit on cold tyres.
Running the alternate strategy, Marti led until being passed by the also still-to-stop Richard Verschoor. Duerksen held a 2s lead once the pair eventually headed for the pits, and Bortoleto snatched second from Martins with five laps to go.
Having been unable to reduce the deficit to Duerksen, Bortoleto remained in second until the finish to become champion.
Verschoor used his fresh tyres late on to climb to third ahead of Martins, with Prema’s Ollie Bearman fifth and Marti a distant sixth.
DAMS driver Dino Beganovic pipped Hitech’s Amaury Cordeel to seventh by 0.1s, with MP’s Oliver Goethe and Rodin Motorsport’s Ritomo rounding out the top-10.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
