Formula 2 returned to action after a month’s break at Imola over the weekend. Alex Dunne battled to a second feature race win in three races and inherited the points lead, while the day before, Jak Crawford cruised to the sprint race victory. Here are five things that Feeder Series learned from the fourth round of the season. 

By Martin Lloyd

Before either of the races had taken place, Dunne had already marked himself out as one to watch by pipping fellow rookie Arvid Lindblad to first place in practice. Dino Beganovic then bested Sebastián Montoya in qualifying by only 0.003 seconds, with Victor Martins a further 0.006 seconds behind. Crawford had a slightly larger margin of 1.1s over Lindblad in a calm sprint race before Dunne used a fast pit stop and overtaking gusto to secure feature race victory on Sunday over the Hitech pair of Luke Browning and Beganovic.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: Invicta’s Staněk: ‘Many people underrate me’
• Qualifying report and quotes: Hitech’s Beganovic says mindset reset helped him land maiden F2 pole
• Sprint race report and quotes: DAMS’ Crawford takes dominant F2 sprint victory at Imola
• Feature race report and quotes: F2’s Dunne: ‘I’m now in a position where winning the championship is a possibility’

1. Dunne continues impressive start 

After the F2 sprint race in Bahrain, Alex Dunne was despondent. He had been responsible for three separate incidents during the race, while he also received a penalty for driving too quickly during the safety car period. The Irishman looked in his hotel mirror and told himself to ‘chill out’. Since then, he has scored 64 points in five races, including two feature race wins at Sakhir and Imola. 

Dunne put together a masterclass on Sunday. He was indebted to his Rodin pit crew for servicing him more quickly than did Invicta for Leonardo Fornaroli and Campos for Arvid Lindblad, both of whom entered the pits on lap six in front of Dunne but emerged behind him.

But Dunne’s victory was down largely to his own overtaking prowess at a circuit wherepassing is exceedingly difficult. After he passed Fornaroli and Lindblad in the pits, he also profited from Dino Beganovic’s running wide exiting Tosa on lap eight before dispatching of Luke Browning the following lap.

After the safety car restart at the end of lap 18, Dunne had a difficult task: quickly dispatching those who had started on prime tyres while ensuring that he maintained track position to those behind on the same strategy. 

While the majority of drivers in F1, F2 and F3 this weekend were reluctant to overtake at corners other than the Tamburello chicane, Dunne made the Tosa corner his own. He passed Ritomo Miyata and Pepe Martí there, while making moves on Roman Staněk and Dürksen at Tamburello. By the time second-place finisher Browning had passed Joshua Dürksen, the gap was more than five seconds and too large for the Briton to bridge.

Dunne’s win has sent him to the top of the drivers’ standings by six points. It is too early to know if he’ll stay there, but his recent run of form suggests the Rodin driver could now contend for the title – something he too confirmed to Feeder Series was now possible.

2. Hitech weather the storm to take triple podium

The off-track build-up to the Imola round was less than ideal for Hitech, but their drivers produced strong results throughout the weekend. On Tuesday 6 May, it was announced that their former team principal Oliver Oakes had resigned from his role as team principal at the Alpine F1 Team. Two days later, it emerged that his brother, William Oakes, had been arrested at Hitech’s Silverstone base and charged with ‘transferring criminal property’. Both remain directors of Hitech and the various companies associated with it, but speculation raged over whether the arrest would affect Hitech’s ability to compete. 

The team operated normally at Imola this week, even posting their best performance of the season. Beganovic started the weekend by taking pole position on Friday. The Swede was fortunate that the red flags came out moments before Lindblad set a faster lap, but his pace was undeniable. Beganovic fell behind Dunne in the feature race only after he ran wide in an attempt to overtake Browning on the outside of Tosa. Though that error dropped him to a net third place, he astutely defended his first F2 feature race podium from Lindblad in the closing stages and finished 1.209s ahead at the flag.

Meanwhile, Browning drove to a solid third place in the sprint. He was unable to match Crawford and Lindblad’s speed, but he finished 1.106s clear of Martins in fourth. He improved on this result by one place in the feature race. While he was unable to defeat Dunne after the pit stops, Browning took home another solid 18 points and scored his fourth podium in seven races this season. 

Both drivers have shown consistent speed at the start of the season, and their three podium finishes across the weekend lifted Hitech above Campos in the teams’ standings and into a one-point lead. Browning also now sits second in the drivers’ standings on 58 points, six behind Dunne, while Beganovic is ninth on 29. 

“Last year I found that … it’s very easy for it not to come together in both Formula 3 and Formula 2,” Browning told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “They’re very difficult series, and pace does not mean anything – it really doesn’t – if you don’t put it together in the races.

“You need to be the whole package by the time you come out of the series, and you really get punished when you’re not. We’re getting there; we’re continuing to learn. I’m not finished yet and I’ve got plenty of growth to go.

3. Martins defeated by luck again

Sometimes it seems as though drivers cannot catch a break – even if they are clearly one of the quickest on the grid. Victor Martins’ strong debut season in 2023 brought him fifth place in the drivers’ standings, while he also won the Anthoine Hubert Award for the best rookie. Last season, he was expected to challenge for the title, but ART struggled to get to grips with the Dallara F2 2024 car. Even with a late-season surge, he ended up only seventh. 

Now, Martins is consistently back at the front of the grid, having qualified in the top three at every race this season, but he is yet to win a race in 2025. He was due to start on pole for the Melbourne feature race after Gabriele Minì was penalised only for it to be cancelled because of torrential rain. He lacked the pace to win at Sakhir and Jeddah but secured top-five results in both feature races

On Friday at Imola, he looked to be the favourite for pole position. After the first runs, he was 0.27s clear of the field, bt he didn’t have a chance to set a second time before the red flags were brought out. Beganovic and Sebastián Montoya got laps in just before it came out and overhauled him by just a few thousandths of a second each, leaving Martins to start third for the feature race.

On the grid, he was finally handed a slice of fortune when Montoya stalled on the formation lap, promoting him to second in the order – but this was short-lived. Martins himself stalled at the race start. The error may have been his, but the margins between starring and stalling off the line are nonetheless extremely fine. 

Without the aid of anti-stall technology in modern F2 cars, Martins was pushed back to the pits to restart the car manually. He stayed on the lead lap and recovered to finish 12th, but it was a difficult run and another opportunity missed for the ART Grand Prix driver. 

The Frenchman is only eighth in the drivers’ standings. He has the speed to challenge for the title, but he will struggle to contend for the title if fortune continues to desert him. 

4. Crawford flawless on Saturday

Jak Crawford started second for the sprint race on Saturday, and once he had passed polesitter Miyata off the line, he was unstoppable. While his competitors waited for an opportunity to file past Miyata at Tamburello, Crawford checked out at the head of the field, surviving a late surge from Lindblad to win with an eventual margin of 1.101s. 

A similar result was possible on Sunday. Crawford was the fifth car in the tightly packed sextet on the option-prime strategy that left the rest of the field in their wake early on. He eventually finished sixth behind Fornaroli after losing a place to Browning on the pit stop cycle, but with a faster stop or more speed in overtaking slower cars after the mid-race safety car, the DAMS driver could have enjoyed a double podium. 

The sprint victory was Crawford’s first win since he led a DAMS 1-3 with Juan Manuel Correa in the Barcelona feature race last season. His season started with two retirements and two finishes outside the top 10, but with two podiums in his last three races and 38 points, the third-year driver is finally kickstarting the title challenge widely expected of him. 

5. Verschoor falters on Friday

Verschoor’s fortunes represented a reversal of Crawford’s. The Dutchman has made a stunning start to his fifth full F2 season but he was perhaps the biggest victim of Friday’s truncated qualifying session. He failed to set a strong time in the first half of the session, and when the session was halted with 5:59 remaining, he was still in 19th place. This left Verschoor in the nightmarish position of resuming his championship bid from the fourth-lowest starting spot on a track with limited overtaking opportunities. 

In light of this, Verschoor’s ninth place in the feature race was impressive. It spoke of a driver who is able to produce a result in difficult circumstances, and the two points gained could prove crucial in an eventual championship battle. 

Granted, there was luck involved. Verschoor’s decision to start on the supersoft tyre meant he leapfrogged those who started on softs and had to pit late in the race. Nonetheless, he has lost the championship lead and now sits below both Dunne and Browning in the standings. 

When he retired to the pits from 15th in the sprint race, Verschoor took his first result outside the top six this season. Still, the MP Motorsport driver is in a strong position. In just four days, Verschoor takes to the Circuit de Monaco, where he secured pole in 2024 and could have won the feature race but for a race-ending mechanical issue.

Results and standings after round 4 at Imola 

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Dino Beganovic, 1:27.418	Sebastián Montoya, +0.003	Victor Martins, +0.006
Sprint race (25 laps)	Jak Crawford, 38:06.814	Arvid Lindblad, +1.101	Luke Browning, +7.594
Feature race, (35 laps)	Alex Dunne, 55:50.708	Luke Browning, +6.592	Dino Beganovic, +7.599

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Alex Dunne, 64	Hitech, 87
P2	Luke Browning, 58	Campos Racing, 86
P3	Richard Verschoor, 55	MP Motorsport, 67
P4	Leonardo Fornaroli, 52	Rodin Motorsport, 64
P5	Arvid Lindblad, 45	Invicta Racing, 61
P6	Pepe Martí, 41	DAMS, 39
P7	Jak Crawford, 38	ART Grand Prix, 36
P8	Victor Martins, 33	Prema Racing, 19
P9	Dino Beganovic, 29	AIX Racing, 11
P10	Oliver Goethe, 12	Van Amersfoort Racing, 3

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency