Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Noel Leon claimed Formula 2 feature race victory at the Hungaroring after a spectacular strategic call by his Campos Racing team to capitalised on an early virtual safety car.
The Mexican fended off charges from both Kush Maini and Rafael Camara to secure his third win of the season.
ART Grand Prix’s Maini converted his pole position into the race lead at lights out ahead of Leon, who got the jump on Camara to move into second.
Towards the rear, Nikola Tsolov was involved in his second incident of the weekend, making contact with John Bennett and Martinius Stenshorne, leaving the later with steering damage.
With Maini breaking away, all the attention was on his teammate, Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, who found himself defending from Invicta’s Joshua Duerksen. Diving down the inside of turn 1, the Paraguayan moved himself into fifth.
By lap 10, Maini found himself over four seconds clear of Leon behind who was fending off Camara as the lead driver in a DRS train stretching to Inthraphuvasak who was leading the alternative strategy runners.
Duerksen was the first of the frontrunners to dive for the pits on lap 16 with Leon following a lap later, just in time for the virtual safety car to be thrown after Rafael Villagomez pulled off to the side of the track with a mechanical failure.
With Camara pitting five laps later, Leon extended his net race lead to over six seconds from the Brazilian.
Just a lap later, Leon inherited the net race lead as Maini dived to the pits, the last driver to get rid of the medium tyres. His teammate Inthraphuvasak moved into the race lead ahead of Dino Beganovic, the pair becoming the leading two on the alternate soft tyre strategy.
The Swedish driver didn’t last long as he dived for the pits on lap 23 before Tsolov and Inthraphuvasak followed two laps later.
Recovering from his worst qualifying of 2026, Alex Dunne took over the race lead with his Rodin team hoping for a late safety car. It didn’t come though and eventually the Irishman handed the race lead to Leon with five laps remaining.
Just a second and a half separated the top three as the race entered its dying stages. Maini couldn’t make an impression on Leon and instead came under increasing pressure from Camara behind.
With Maini defending from the Invicta behind, Leon was free to come home and claim victory in Budapest while Maini clung on to second, finishing just four tenths ahead of Camara.
Laurens Van Hoepen claimed fourth having climbed from sixth to fourth at lights out while Inthraphuvasak’s alternate strategy saw him finish fifth ahead of Beganovic.