Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Joshua Duerksen was a man in a hurry at Monza, making plenty of overtakes across Formula 2’s two races but rueing that a maiden win went amiss.
He rose from 10th to third in the sprint race, his second F2 podium, and qualified 11th for the feature race. His eventual finishing position was fifth, after running as high as second and as low as 15th.
The AIX Racing driver told Formula Scout he was “really happy with what we could achieve finally this weekend” and sure that “without my mistakes, probably the win” would have been achieved too in the longer race.
“I’ve done three or four big mistakes [and] with the safety car we got a bit unlucky. We pitted one lap too early. If we would have waited one more lap, then for sure I would be in a good spot to win the race.”
“I think we had the pace,” he added. “We had a big chance to win the race.”
Incredibly, Duerksen got up to fourth on lap one. After neatly picking his way through the first corner chaos, he hassled Prema’s drivers through the Roggia chicane and the two Lesmo corners.
He would go on to enjoy a wheel-to-wheel fight with Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli through the Rettifilo chicane, and that was where Duerksen made most of his moves.
“It was a really fun fight. We both were aggressive, just on the limit of crashing, but it was really fun. Not only with Kimi, but also with all the other guys. Just really hard fighting. Monza is just the best track to have good fights, these long straights allow you to really push to be all the time behind the guys and to have many overtaking opportunities.”
Having been second on lap six, Duerksen sunk to 15th after the pitstops had played out (bar Invicta Racing’s late stopper Kush Maini) and had to go on a charge.
When he finally disposed of Prema duo Antonelli and Ollie Bearman again, Duerksen was straight onto the tail of ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins for sixth with laps to go. But he went off at the Roggia chicane after misjudging his attempt to pass him, letting Antonelli back through as he rejoined.
“It was going to get a bit tight on the chicane. I’m not sure if I would have had the space there because even Victor didn’t make the corner. So then I had to go to the run-off, go around the bollard, it was quite tight.”
Overall, Duerksen admits that he “was not expecting these results this year,” hoping rather to “be close to the top 10 or fighting for a top 10 place by the end of the year”.
The 20-year-old Paraguayan’s highest-scoring weekend yet in F2 underlined the promise shown by his Imola feature race podium and Red Bull Ring front row start.
“We’re doing great progress, great improvement and of course I’m really happy with how the season is going at the moment.”