Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli scored a maiden Formula 2 victory in Saturday’s sprint race at Silverstone
The reigning FIA Formula 3 champion made use of reversed-grid pole to take his second career single-seater win, his last triumph coming in 2021 while competing in Formula 4.
Fornaroli briefly slipped to second at the start behind DAMS’s Kush Maini, but he swiftly reclaimed the advantage into Copse on lap one and edged out a small gap.
Maini briefly moved back into DRS range on lap five, but was coming under increasing pressure from Prema’s Sebastian Montoya, who had made up three places from sixth on the grid.
Montoya snatched second 10 laps later into Stowe, with Maini having to battle to hold off Invicta’s Roman Stanek and AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen for third.
Fornaroli resisted Montoya’s charge in the final five laps to take the chequered flag 1.4s clear of his pursuer.
Maini lost third to Stanek into Stowe on the penultimate lap, but held off Duerksen to finish fourth. Duerksen, meanwhile edged out Maini’s team-mate Jak Crawford to fifth by just 0.001s.
Hitech GP’s Luke Browning was just behind in sixth, having prevailed in an early battle with Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad who eventually was shuffled back to 10th.
Championship leader Richard Verschoor made a poor start from the second row of the grid and slipped down the order, but recovered ground to salvage a point in eighth ahead ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins, who will start from pole in Sunday’s feature race.
Verschoor’s closest pre-race title challenger, Alex Dunne, retired following an early collision with Prema’s Gabriele Mini and dropped to fourth in the standings behind Fornaroli and Crawford.
Hitech’s Dino Beganovic stalled from third on the grid on the formation lap and recovered from a pitlane start to 18th.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
