Martins wins F2’s Losail feature race as Fornaroli provisionally lands title

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Victor Martins won Formula 2’s feature race at Losail, holding off Leonardo Fornaroli who provisionally became champion with a round to spare.

Fornaroli started on pole, but Martins led before the opening corner as Alex Dunne passed Oliver Goethe for fourth.

ART Grand Prix’s Martins built a five-second lead in five laps, while Fornaroli struggled with front-left tyre degradation and pitted on lap six. Like most of the field, he had started on Pirelli’s soft compound tyres.

Martins was left with a 9.6-second lead over Fornaroli’s Invicta Racing team-mate Roman Stanek, who after going wide was passed at turn one by MP Motorsport’s Goethe. The top seven pitted on lap seven, moving Hitech GP’s Dino Beganovic to the front after he had started on the hard compound.

The drivers on the same strategy moved up into the top seven, with Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad, Van Amersfoort Racing’s John Bennett and Trident’s Laurens van Hoepen closest to Beganovic. That order changed when van Hoepen went deep into the final corner on lap eight and Hitech’s Luke Browning went past.

Beganovic was the fastest on track, already 5.4s clear by lap 10 and holding a 10.6s gap when the safety car appeared on lap 15 due to Goethe stopping trackside. Lindblad took the opportunity to pit, meaning he needed to do 17 laps on the soft tyres, as did DAMS’ Kush Maini and AIX Racing’s Cian Shields.

Martins took the lap 17 restart in fifth place, with Fornaroli on his tail then a gap of several seconds to Lindblad in seventh as the field had not been brought back together. Dunne, Prema’s Sebastian Montoya and Campos’s Nikola Tsolov rounded out the top 10, but Dunne and Tsolov had five-second penalties for unsafe releases from their pitstops.

Beganovic pulled away again, creating a 5.6s gap before pitting at the end of lap 27. Hitech did not risk double stacking so Browning then inherited the lead by 11.4s over Bennett, with the pair making their compulsory pitstops on lap 29.

Van Hoepen pitted too, having held off Martins and Fornaroli for several laps by improving his pace. Keeping them at bay ultimately was not enough to help the other late pitters, since Beganovic was a distant ninth. He initially set fastest laps, but then failed to clear traffic once he reached it as Martins kept Fornaroli at bay up front.

Lindblad’s tyre-saving priorities allowed Dunne to open up a large enough gap to keep third after passing him, Montoya was fifth, and MP’s erstwhile title contender Richard Verschoor profited from Tsolov’s penalty to finish sixth.

Browning picked up the final point in 10th, but his title hopes ended along with DAMS driver Jak Crawford’s in 11th place.

Post-race, Lindblad was summoned to the stewards for allegedly driving unnecessarily slowly during the safety car period. Should he be penalised, it could put Verschoor back into title contention and second in the standings.

Race results (32 laps)