Martins fastest in F2’s incident-packed Melbourne practice

PhotoL James Sutton

ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins topped an incident-packed first Formula 2 practice session of 2025 in Melbourne.

He set a personal best effort of 1m32.587s shortly before red flags waved in response to two separate incidents three minutes before the end of the scheduled 45-minute run time. It was the third stoppage of the session, and ended it.

The first came shortly after the 10-minute mark, when McLaren junior driver Alex Dunne found the gravel. Martins ran through it between turns 11 and 12, but managed to get his car back on track. When Dunne came through the same corner he also ran wide, and both ends of his car ended up making contact with the barriers.

After after 10 minutes had passed, the session resumed. Martins jumped up to the top of the times, displacing early pacesetter Richard Verschoor. Kush Maini held second, ahead of Roman Stanek and Jak Crawford. 

Just moments after Martins went quickest, practice was stopped again. Oliver Goethe had spun through the gravel at turn 10. He rejoined the circuit, but slowed to a stop on track and could not get his car restarted without assistance.

Roughly six minutes remained when the session resumed. Few drivers improved, but among those able to were Martins, who managed a post a time a tenth of a second quicker than he had set previously. It put him 0.149s ahead of DAMS’ Maini.

AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen was another late improver who went third quickest, ahead of Invicta Racing’s Stanek, DAMS’ Crawford, and Hitech GP’s Luke Browning.

Also able to improve were Prema’s Sebastian Montoya and ART GP’s Ritomo Miyata also improved, who placed ninth and 11th.

Yellow flags had waved when Rodin’s Amaury Cordeel came to a stop just ahead of turn 13, which interrupted some drivers’ attempts to set new personal bests, then moments later Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad spun at turn 10 and hit the barriers so red flags had to be used.

Free practice results