AIX Racing’s Joshua Dürksen returned to the top step of the podium to open the 2025 Formula 2 season, 97 days after winning F2’s final race of 2024 in Abu Dhabi. Feeder Series spoke with Dürksen about the opening sprint race of the season.

By Calla Kra-Caskey and Michael McClure

Dürksen overtook reverse-grid polesitter Leonardo Fornaroli at the start and never relinquished the lead through 23 laps and two safety car restarts. Fornaroli and Luke Browning, rivals for last year’s F3 title, held position behind him until the end.

“Last year, when I won the race in Abu Dhabi, I [thought] this is the perfect ending,” Dürksen said in the post-race press conference. “Coming into the weekend, I knew I would be in the front. I knew I would be on a good pace, but it didn’t come into my mind that I would win the first race. Then of course, with starting P2 today, I was thinking, ‘Yeah, this is possible. Let’s do it.’”

With his third career F2 victory, Dürksen became the first driver in combined F2 and GP2 history to achieve back-to-back wins spanning two seasons. Björn Wirdheim previously did so in predecessor series F3000 in 2002 and 2003, the year Dürksen was born.

The feature race win last year, the Paraguayan said, was ‘great also for the mindset’ as he entered 2025.

“It gave us extra energy and we just kept working as we were doing,” he told Feeder Series. “The team was very motivated, me as well, because to finish like this, it gives you an extra boost to keep working and to keep getting these results.”

In that race, Dürksen had to battle polesitter Victor Martins, who again starts on pole for tomorrow’s feature race. Today, however, Martins was the first retirement of the race.

The ART Grand Prix driver got a good launch from seventh but lost several positions by going wide at Turn 1 while side by side with Roman Staněk and Richard Verschoor, who were battling for fourth. On the second lap, Martins driver lost control of his car at Turn 5 and went into the barriers, retiring from the race and prompting a virtual safety car that lasted until lap four.

As the top four broke away at the restart, Dino Beganovic, who had lost two places on the start, passed Staněk for fifth around the outside of Turn 11.

Max Esterson then spun into the barriers at Turn 6 on lap six, prompting a full safety car on lap seven. 

The race restarted again on lap 11, and Dürksen had already created a 1.1-second gap over Fornaroli by the end of the lap.. On the next lap, Beganovic spun at the Turn 9 and 10 chicane as Staněk attempted to pass him. The Hitech driver kept the car moving but dropped to 17th.

The other Trident of Sami Meguetounif spun in the same spot on lap 14 and beached himself in the gravel, causing a second full safety car. 

The race restarted on lap 17 without any changes in the top eight. Verschoor, Staněk, Sebastián Montoya, Gabriele Minì and Pepe Martí rounded out the points scorers as a recovering Alex Dunne passed Arvid Lindblad for ninth on the penultimate lap. Meanwhile, Minì took the fastest lap. 

Earlier on Saturday, the drivers went out for a shakedown after a number of drivers experienced electrical issues throughout Friday’s practice and qualifying sessions. The 15-minute shakedown at 10:25 local was added to the calendar Friday evening and was intended to resolve outstanding issues with the cars.

While Fornaroli and Browning told Feeder Series that the shakedown had little effect on their or their teams’ preparation for the races, Dürksen said he rued the loss of sleep as a result of the late change.

“I was still very late on the track, and then when I got the announcement, I was like, ‘Oagh, I have to wake up early again,’” he said. “Always the night from Friday to Saturday, I’m so happy because the race is in the afternoon, so I know I can sleep how much I want, and then I was like, ‘Aw, the only night where I can sleep more than nine hours or something, it’s gone now.’

“But apart from that, the rest was fine. The engineers and the mechanics are anyway used to sleeping very little, so for them it was not an issue. I’m still fine; I can survive some days without a lot of sleep, but apart from that, the performance of all the team was still great, and in the end it didn’t really affect us.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency