Joshua Dürksen dominated proceedings on the second day of Formula 2’s post-season test in Abu Dhabi, setting the fastest time of the event at Yas Marina Circuit – and the best lap set so far in the Dallara F2 2024 at the 5.281-kilometre circuit – in Thursday morning’s session.

By Michael McClure

AIX Racing’s Dürksen finished with the second-best time in the afternoon and the third-best time overall yesterday before being stripped of his afternoon result when his car was found to have been underweight during the session.

Still, the feature race winner in F2’s 2024 season finale was a consistent presence at the top of the timesheets in all other sessions. He finished fourth Wednesday morning before topping the times in both the morning and afternoon on Thursday.

These were also his last sessions of 2024 in the F2 car. While the other 21 drivers on track today will remain in their cars for the final day of the test tomorrow, Dürksen will relinquish his seat to sports car racer Nicolás Varrone, who arrived in Abu Dhabi this morning after having tested GP2 machinery in Barcelona in preparation for his return to single-seaters.

The 24-year-old, a factory Corvette Racing driver, is a two-time class winner in the 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as the 2023 World Endurance Championship LMGTE Am class champion and 2023 24 Hours of Daytona LMP3 class winner. He last raced single-seaters in 2020 in British F3 in a partial campaign as budget issues limited his upward mobility.

Dürksen will remain on site to help Varrone reacclimate himself to the car tomorrow, Feeder Series understands. The Argentine stayed late with AIX on Thursday for preparatory work and seat fittings.

Dürksen’s times and handover to Varrone were not the only talking points concerning him in the paddock today. Feeder Series learned that before the afternoon sessions, the Paraguayan’s car underwent an engine change. Work continued on his car into the afternoon, and he did not go out on track until halfway into the session, the last driver to have done so.

Day 2 morning as it happened

In contrast to the issues that plagued the first day of running, the second day got off without issue. Almost all drivers ventured out in the opening minutes of the session and some had even set quick times, with Dürksen’s representative benchmark of a 1:38.472 quickly beaten by Sebastián Montoya on a 1:38.239 seven minutes into the session.

Moments later, at 9:08, the red flag came out after Van Amersfoort Racing’s John Bennett spun at Turn 2 and stopped on track. That was the first of two interruptions in the session, the second being when Bennett stopped at 10:16 at Turn 3.

In the meantime, drivers dipped into the 1m37s range, led by Dürksen on a 1:37.529 as soon as the red flag was withdrawn. Gabriele Minì went faster twice, on a 1:37.361 and a 1:37.282, before the MP duo of Richard Verschoor and Oliver Goethe stole the lead with times of a 1:37.257 and a 1:37.243 respectively.

Roman Staněk was the next to go quickest on a 1:37.187 before Dürksen set the shock headline time of a 1:35.583, which went unbeaten for the rest of the session. The time, set at 9:38 local, was 1.114 seconds clear of Crawford’s best from Wednesday and 1.604 faster than Staněk’s, not to mention 0.162 seconds faster than Martins’ pole time from Friday.

That gap came down substantially over the next hour, beginning with Fornaroli’s 1:37.038. the Prema pair of Gabriele Minì and Montoya broke into the 1m36s, as did Trident’s Max Esterson, while many more drivers did so just before Bennett’s red flag.

Esterson was the fastest of those on a 1:35.904, with Martins joining him in the 1m35s on a 1:35.931. Minì and Fornaroli made improvements of their own to jump to times of 1:35.950 and 1:35.978 respectively, while Verschoor slotted into second in the final hour with a 1:35.894.

Behind those six, Pepe Martí, Alex Dunne, Rafael Villagómez and Staněk rounded out the top 10.

The especially rapid times in the morning session can be explained by the entire grid’s focus on qualifying simulations on supersoft tyres. Nonetheless, the Prema, Campos and Hitech teammates, as well as Staněk and AIX’s Cian Shields, also did race runs of varying lengths in the final half hour.

As Staněk explained to Feeder Series after the session, the split in strategy between him and teammate Fornaroli was due to the issues the former faced yesterday, among them a spin in the morning.

Day 2 afternoon as it happened

The afternoon session was almost exclusively dedicated to the race runs all drivers did, though a few set quicker times at the beginning and end of the session.

The first representative times came from Arvid Lindblad, who finished the morning session 14^th. The Campos rookie set a 1:39.223 10 minutes into the session before bettering his time with a 1:38.664, which remained unbeaten until just before the end of the first hour.

Speaking to Feeder Series after the session, Lindblad said he had “quite a few things to improve on [his] side” but was “overall quite happy with the progress” he had made in his first two days in the F2 car. He is one of four drivers sampling the machinery for the first time in official sessions.

Lindblad’s best times, though, were still not near Dürksen’s qualifying run from the morning. Esterson got closer with a 1:36.705, which remained the benchmark for the next two hours until Dürksen usurped him again with a 1:36.533 set three minutes remaining in the three-hour session. Esterson’s Trident teammate Sami Meguetounif followed him closely throughout the session and finished five thousandths behind the American to complete the top three.

Almost a second off from them, but similarly closely matched for much of the session, were Prema teammates Minì and Montoya. They were split by a hundredth for much of the afternoon before Minì made a late improvement to move to a 1:37.448 ahead of Montoya’s 1:37.690.

The Rodin pair of Dunne and Christian Mansell – both of whom took a much more aggressive approach to practice starts than did their peers – finished sixth and seventh after making late improvements, with early pacesetter Lindblad in eighth. Bennett and DAMS’ Kush Maini rounded out the top 10, with Luke Browning of Hitech the final driver below the 1m40s mark.

Tomorrow’s afternoon session will run an hour earlier from 13:00 to 16:00, with the break between the morning and afternoon sessions shortened as a result.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency