MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor climbed from ninth on the grid to snatch victory on the final lap of Formula 2’s feature race in Jeddah
Verschoor used an alternate strategy to propel himself into contention after making his mandatory pitstop in the closing stages before denying DAMS’s Jack Crawford the win, the Dutchman making amends for the penalty which cost him victory in Saturday’s sprint race.
Having led away from pole, Crawford’s biggest challenger for the most part was ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins, who ran a close second before snatching the net lead by making his mandatory stop one lap later than Crawford.
The pair’s squabble was briefly interrupted by a virtual safety car period due to the debris on the pit straight, caused by Van Amersfoort Racing’s John Bennett losing his front wing, and Crawford immediately tried to reclaim the advantage when the track returned to green.
Martins initially fended off the challenge before Crawford used DRS to sweep past on the next lap. Verschoor held the outright lead until pitting with six laps to go and emerged on supersoft tyres just ahead of Martins, who had slipped four-seconds back from Crawford.
Verschoor resisted pressure from Martins initially before pulling clear, and he halved the deficit to Crawford over the next two laps. Having been caught by the start of the final lap, Crawford was powerless to stop Verschoor from sweeping past with DRS, the latter then pulling 1.7s clear before taking the chequered flag.
Virtuosi’s Leonardo Fornaroli ran third early on but was shuffled back to fifth by Hitech’s Luke Browning and Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne before the trio made their pitstops.
Browning was soon forced off the road at turn two after Dunne bounced over a kerb while trying to complete an overtake. Fornaroli capitalised to move back ahead of the pair, and he eventually finished 0.7s behind Martins in fourth.
Having been instructed by his team to let Browning back through following the virtual safety car period, Dunne then lost further ground to Campos Racing’s Pepe Marti, who dived past at the final corner and then resisted a renewed challenge from the Irishman into turn one.
Marti then spent three laps in a thrilling battle with Browning before sweeping by on the pit straight, with Browning then missing the first chicane after Dunne also tried to sneak past. Dunne’s challenge was soon hampered by a five-second penalty for forcing Browning off the track, and that resulted in him dropping one place to eighth at the end of the race.
Browning, meanwhile, finished 0.6s behind Marti in sixth and one place ahead of Marti’s team-mate Arvid Lindlad. Prema’s Gabriel Mini lost out to Saturday’s sprint race winner Lindblad late on and held off DAMS’s Kush Maini by 0.1s to finish ninth.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
