Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Trident’s Richard Verschoor has been disqualified from victory in Formula 2’s Hungaroring sprint race over a technical non-conformity with his car.
Virtuosi Racing’s Kush Maini has been promoted to first place, which is his first F2 win. ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins moves up to second place and Campos Racing’s championship lader Isack Hadjar completes the podium, while DAMS’ Juan Manuel Correa claims the last point in eighth place.
The stewards determined that “the rear plank of Car 22 [Verschoor] was below the minimum thickness required”, meaning it was not compliant with F2’s technical regulations.
This is the fifth time Verschoor has been disqualified in F2 due to a technical non-conformity, and the fourth time he has lost a podium finish because of it. Earlier this year he was stripped of sprint race victory at Jeddah in using an “incorrect throttle pedal progressivity map”.
Verschoor himself joked in the press conference after the race about the number of times he had had a victory taken away post-race.
“[This win is] Not special at all. Many times in F2 when I won a race it got taken away or in Monaco…, I will keep it nice, I wanted to say some words I cannot, but somehow I feel like I cannot really be happy until it’s certain so I’m just going to wait for one hour or two see if I really got the win and then I will celebrate.”
The Dutch began the race on the hard tyre from reversed-grid pole position, then lost the lead on lap four of 28 to Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who had fitted the soft compound in what was an unusually strategic F2 sprint race.
“I had to be patient because of course it was a bit of a gamble,” he said. “Well not really a gamble because I thought I did the right choice, but then when someone passes you on the softs you’re like ‘did I make the right choice?’. But then quite quickly I realised that he was going to struggle a lot. And in the end that’s what happened. I had a very good pace, a very good car, so that helped my race massively.”
Antonelli’s tyres started dropped mid-race and Verschoor regained the lead on lap 17.
“I knew that my race would be at the end compared to the people on the soft tyres. And I was also looking behind what Kush was doing, if he was pushing. I just did my own pace, so I was pushing a lot in certain corners where I would have pushed a bit less if I was on the soft. And then at some point, he [Antonelli] started locking a lot the tyres, and normally that’s a sign that they really are starting to give up. So then I didn’t take too much risk trying to pass.”