Formula 2’s leading drivers, Paul Aron and Isack Hadjar, swapped positions in the closely-fought championship during the Silverstone round. Aron had a dismal weekend and failed to score, thus handing the points lead to Hadjar, who had a superb run to his third feature race win of the season.

By Steven Walton

Aron’s consistency takes a holiday

Constantly qualifying and finishing inside the top ten has been the hallmark of Paul Aron’s maiden Formula 2 season, even if he has yet to pick up a race win.

But the consistent run of points and podiums ended dramatically in Silverstone, as he faced a turbulent weekend where not much went right.

The trouble began in qualifying when he spun at the start of his final run, damaging any chance of improving his lap time. Aron held the provisional pole at the time but soon fell to 12th after the spin.

Later, both races went awry for him. An engine failure forced him out of the sprint race, while he hit Joshua Dürksen in the feature race, ruining any chance of a points finish.

Silverstone was not only his first round of 2024 without scoring a point but the first where Aron hasn’t featured on the podium.

This was also the third consecutive round where Aron had made a clear driver error. In Spain, he ran wide into the gravel during the feature race, which cost him three positions, and in Austria, he spun in qualifying, costing him an opportunity to improve his lap time.

A turning point for Hadjar?

When all is done and dusted this year, there’s a good chance the Silverstone feature race will be seen as a turning point in the championship.

Isack Hadjar woke up on Sunday morning with an 11-point deficit to championship leader Aron. But after winning the Silverstone feature race from pole position, Hadjar’s deficit transformed into a cushy 16-point advantage.

The Red Bull junior driver now leads the F2 championship for the first time.

Hadjar has shown for several rounds now that when he’s not hit by bad luck, he is nearly impossible to beat.

The only reason he isn’t further ahead in the championship is due to bad luck earlier in the season. He was involved in an unavoidable collision that wasn’t his fault in Bahrain, and he retired from both races in Jeddah with technical issues.

Since then, Hadjar has been on the prowl, storming to confident feature race wins in Melbourne, Imola and now Silverstone.

Arguably, an unfair penalty robbed him of another win in the Melbourne sprint race, and he also deserved to win Monaco’s feature race but settled for second when Zak O’Sullivan got lucky with a virtual safety car.

Still, Hadjar had a dismal wet sprint race on Saturday in Silverstone, appearing to spin off into the gravel on his own – a mistake that can be ill-afforded by those seeking the F2 crown.

Hard-fought battles at Invicta

At Silverstone, for the second time in three races, Gabriel Bortoleto lost out while fighting hard with his Invicta Racing teammate, Kush Maini.

Last month in Spain, Bortoleto and Maini battled hard on the final lap of the feature race, both desperate to finish sixth. That fight ended with Bortoleto hitting Maini and being penalised for causing a collision. Bortoleto fell to tenth that day, costing him five points.

In Silverstone, a rematch occurred in the sprint race, with Bortoleto again attacking Maini as the pair scrambled to finish third.

On the final lap of the sprint race, Bortoleto made an audacious move in the final chicane and boldly snatched the position, even running wide through the final corner – and dramatically skipping over curbs – to hold Maini behind.

After the race, Bortoleto was stripped of the podium when the stewards ruled he had made the initial overtake off the track. He was penalised five seconds and dropped to fourth, costing him three points. Maini inherited the podium.

This battling between teammates is worth noting because every point they score matters for the teams’ standings – a championship Invicta is in contention for.

With 156 points, Invicta sits third, two points behind MP Motorsport and 15 points behind the leading team, Campos Racing.

ART and Prema lack raw pace

Sunday’s feature race gave F2 fans a glimpse of a battle expected to be far more common this year.

Victor Martins and Ollie Bearman ran first and second at the end of the first lap. Before the season began, these two were tipped as the championship protagonists, given they battled to be F2’s top rookie the year before.

But ultimately, that vision never came to fruition, as both teams have struggled with the change to F2’s new-for-2024 chassis.

In Silverstone, Martins and Bearman started strong and then slowly lost ground. It did not appear to be down to bad driving or notable mistakes but just a lack of overall raw pace compared to the eventual top three: Hadjar, Zane Maloney and Jak Crawford.

Martins faded to fifth while Bearman fell to seventh. Afterwards, Bearman said in a statement issued by his Prema team that he was struggling to keep up with the cars in front of him after his pitstop. “I was just missing the components to push the car to the limit, and it’s quite sad because it could have been a good race today,” he said.

While Prema did pick up a win this weekend with Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the sprint race, that result came in wet conditions which Antonelli confidently kept on top of.

Watch out for Crawford

If not for a penalty caused by his team rather than himself, we could call Crawford ‘the man with two wins in three races’.

It should not be overlooked that Crawford won the Silverstone feature race on the road, but fell to third due to a 5-second penalty he picked up for being unsafely released from his pitstop into the path of Maloney.

Last month, Crawford won the feature race in Spain, picking up his first big result in a season blighted by bad luck.

During the recent triple-header of rounds, which included Spain, Spielberg and Silverstone, Crawford has been far more consistent, scoring points in all six races. Crawford picked up 52 of his 84 points this season in those three rounds alone.

For comparison, while Crawford picked up 52 points in those three races, championship leader Hadjar only got 55 and former championship leader Aron got just 37.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency

Want to keep updated on all our articles? Check out our Whatsapp Channel here!