The third round of the 2025 Formula 2 season brought the youngest winner in the series’ history in the sprint race before the most experienced driver won the feature. Here are four things that Feeder Series learned from the F2 weekend at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. 

By Martin Lloyd

Victor Martins was fastest in practice, and he carried his form forward to qualifying, in which he was pipped to pole position at the last moment by Jak Crawford. On Saturday, Arvid Lindblad rose from sixth on the grid to take victory in the sprint race after Richard Verschoor was penalised for forcing Pepe Martí off the track. Verschoor then redeemed himself by seeing off Crawford on the final lap of the feature race.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: F2 rookies expect to be ‘quickly up to speed’ at new tracks such as Jeddah
• Qualifying report and quotes: Crawford had to ‘risk it all’ for surprise pole in Jeddah
• Sprint race report and quotes: Lindblad becomes F2’s youngest winner after Verschoor penalty: ‘Not the way I want to win’
• Feature race report and quotes: Verschoor makes last-lap pass for victory in Jeddah with bold alternate strategy call

1. Verschoor stakes his claim to the championship

Richard Verschoor enjoyed the best weekend of his five-year F2 career in Jeddah. The Dutchman rose from ninth on the grid to win the feature race, and he would also have won the sprint race if not for a five-second penalty for forcing Pepe Martí off the track at Turn 2 that dropped him to fourth.

In the feature race, Verschoor showed astonishing pace on the medium tyres as the only driver on that strategy to maintain pace with the top eight on the grid, who had all started on softs. Having started ninth, the MP Motorsport driver set a succession of fastest laps while in clean air before diving into the pits on lap 23. 

Of those on the option-prime strategy, only Crawford was in front after Verschoor’s pit stop. Verschoor made use of his softer, newer tyres to close the four-second gap to the American, passing him at the start of the 28th and final lap. The next-best driver to start on mediums, Kush Maini, finished 10th. 

Verschoor, the third-most experienced driver in the series’ history with 107 starts, was imperious, and with victory, he took the championship lead for the second time in his F2 career. He had previously done so back in 2022 after winning the season-opening sprint race in Bahrain.

While only three of the 14 rounds have been completed, Verschoor is now 12 points clear of Martí in the drivers’ standings and has a worst result of sixth in the five races so far. The 24-year-old has made the best start to any of his five seasons in the series. The question now is whether this is merely a short run of form or whether he can finally mount a full-season championship challenge. 

2. A familiar top 10

The back-to-back rounds in Sakhir and Jeddah included the first feature races of the year after the rain forced the Melbourne event to be cancelled. It meant a pecking order began to form, and the top 10 had a strikingly similar look across the two rounds. Eight drivers finished in the top 10 in both feature races, with five drivers twice finishing in the top six. 

Leonardo Fornaroli, Luke Browning and Pepe Martí all finished in the top four in the Sakhir feature race. They could not match the pace of Verschoor or Crawford in the feature race in Jeddah, but all three had the speed for strong top-six finishes. Of the three, only Browning failed to score in the sprint races.

Sakhir feature race winner Alex Dunne was also strong in Jeddah, taking 10 points across the weekend, while Victor Martins achieved his second consecutive feature race podium having qualified second at each of the three rounds. 

Browning has often spoken of his desire to emulate 2024 F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto’s consistency in his own championship efforts. It’s too early to mark any driver out as a title contender, yet each of the top six appears able to score strong points without necessarily having race-winning pace.

3. Prema’s pace remains absent

Prema started the 2025 season with renewed hope for an upturn in their fortunes. Even with a formidable line-up of current F1 drivers Ollie Bearman and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the Italian team endured a torrid 2024, having previously been F2’s resident frontrunners. Prema have continued to struggle this season, the second with the Dallara F2 2024 car, and they sit a lowly eighth in the teams’ standings after three rounds. 

Their lack of pace was evident in the sprint race. Gabriele Minì, who has been promoted to F2 from Prema’s F3 squad, started second but spent the entire race defending from faster competitors. He visited the Turn 1 run-off on five occasions while fending off Roman Staněk, Dunne and finally Crawford, who spun in his attempt to overtake and caused a safety car. Minì eventually finished sixth, which was impressive in light of his clear pace disadvantage. He followed this result with ninth place in the feature race.

Teammate Sebastián Montoya struggled throughout the weekend, finishing 13th in the sprint before retiring from outside the top 10 in the feature race with technical issues. 

Prema have only scored minor points so far this season, with Minì’s Melbourne pole now looking like the exception rather than the rule. They will need a swift turnaround to avoid a second successive season outside of championship contention. 

4. Lindblad announces himself in F2

Arvid Lindblad may have won the sprint race by virtue of Verschoor’s penalty, but his victory was significant nonetheless. The 17-year-old became the youngest winner in F2 history with an impressive drive from sixth on the grid, beating both his experienced teammate Martí and fellow rookie Dunne. He then took a solid seventh in the feature race after a similarly calm drive.

Lindblad’s sprint race was mistake-free. Martí’s wide moment at Turn 8 on lap eight helped his Campos teammate sneak past, and Lindblad never seemed likely to relinquish the place after that. The Briton held on to his position in the late safety car restart after Crawford’s spin, with his assured performance a sign of why the Red Bull programme rates him so highly. 

In 2024, Lindblad won more F3 races – four – than any other driver. His failure to score in nine out of 20 races, however, was the limiting factor behind his championship challenge, and he finished only fourth in the drivers’ standings. 

While Verschoor’s penalty gave him his break, Lindblad’s mature drive showed his star quality in F2 for the first time, in a different manner to his F3 triumphs. His challenge now is to string together more consistent points-scoring weekends to mount a more enduring title charge. 

Results and standings after round 3 in Saudi Arabia

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Jak Crawford, 1:43.579	Victor Martins, +0.022s	Leonardo Fornaroli, +0.092s
Sprint race (20 laps)	Arvid Lindblad, 38:16.059	Pepe Martí, +0.578s	Alex Dunne, +2.087s
Feature race (28 laps)	Richard Verschoor, 51:33.929	Jak Crawford, +1.701s	Victor Martins, +5.852s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Richard Verschoor, 53	Campos Racing, 65
P2	Pepe Martí, 41	MP Motorsport, 59
P3	Leonardo Fornaroli, 40	Invicta Racing, 48
P4	Alex Dunne, 35	Hitech, 45
P5	Luke Browning, 33	Rodin Motorsport, 35
P6	Victor Martins, 28	ART Grand Prix, 28
P7	Arvid Lindblad, 24	DAMS, 21
P8	Jak Crawford, 20	Prema Racing, 15
P9	Dino Beganovic, 12	AIX Racing, 11
P10	Gabriele Minì, 12	Van Amersfoort Racing, 3

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency