Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad converted pole into his second Formula 2 victory during Sunday’s feature race at Barcelona
The Campos driver controlled most of the contest before leading home Prema’s Sebastian Montoya and Saturday’s sprint race winner Richard Verschoor behind the safety car.
Lindblad led from fellow front-row starter Montoya when the race got underway, while MP Motorsport’s Verschoor climbed to third. AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen prevailed in an early dice with Lindblad’s team-mate Pepe Marti to claim sixth before making his mandatory pitstop on lap seven.
Verschoor pitted three laps later to also take on hard tyres and Montoya, who had slipped over two seconds behind Lindblad, came in on the next tour.
Lindblad waited until lap 13 to make his tyre change and emerged still with the net lead, but was held up by the still-to-pit Cian Shields, allowing Montoya and Verschoor to reduce the gap to him. He lost further time while fighting his way past Montoya’s team-mate Gabriele Mini, but had edged away once more by the time he regained the outright lead from DAMS’ Jak Crawford, who pitted on lap 23.
Running the alternate strategy, Crawford used his fresh soft tyres to climb to fourth on lap 30, and he caught Verschoor four laps later. But his charge was ended when the safety car was deployed with two laps remaining due to Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli coming to a stop, with the race finishing under caution.
Fornaroli’s team-mate Roman Stanek came home fourth, with Rodin Motorsport’s points leader Alex Dunne overcoming a three-place grid penalty to fifth. Marti was sixth ahead of DAMS’ Kush Maini and ART Grand Prix duo Victor Martins and Ritomo Miyata, while Mini was the final points-scorer in 10th.
Duerksen’s race fell apart after his pitstop. He was handed a 5s penalty for missing the first two corners while battling Hitech’s Luke Browning, was penalised a further 5s for leaving the track and gaining an advantage, and eventually finished 17th.
Browning later collided with Miyata, who went through the gravel before rejoining. Suffering front-wing damage and incurring a 10s penalty from the incident, Browning eventually trailed home in a distant 20th.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
