AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen climbed from eighth to win the season-closing Formula 2 feature race at Yas Marina.
Roman Stanek led away from pole at the start, while Dino Beganovic took second away from Jak Crawford, who then pitted at the end of lap one to serve a 1o-second stop-go penalty for his tyres being fitted too late on the grid. Having already made up several places, Duerksen was promoted to third.
A clash between Alex Dunne and Victor Martins, which then resulted in Cian Shield collecting Dunne’s car, caused a virtual safety car period on lap two.
Stanek and Beganovic made their mandatory pitstops five laps later, both switching from supersoft to soft tyres. Duerksen capatilised on a battle between the pair on their outlap to pit on the next tour an emerge ahead of Beganovic.
A spin for Sebastian Montoya triggered another VSC, which then became a full safety car period.
Running an alternate strategy by starting on soft tyres, the still-to-pit Leonardo Fornaroli and Arvid Lindblad ran first and second. This year’s champion Fornaroli continued to lead at the restart from Saturday’s sprint race winner Lindblad, who eventually got by with 10 laps remaining. Richard Verschoor soon demoted Fornaroli to third.
Duerksen was promoted to third once Lindblad and Fornaroli pitted with three laps to go, took second on track from Verschoor prior to the Dutchman’s own stop, and reclaimed the lead when Crawford headed to the pitlane for his mandatory tyre change.
Stanek came home 5.5s behind the eventual race winner, while Gabriele Mini benefitted from a 5s pitlane speeding penalty for Beganovic to snatch third by 0.2s
Oliver Goethe was fifth ahead of Rafael Villagomez, Kush Maini and Ritomo Miyata followed, with Lindblad and Crawford completing the points-paying positions – the latter clinching second in the standings. Fornaroli missed out on points in 11th.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
