Kush Maini won his second Formula 2 race and his first on the road in the sprint race in Monaco on Saturday. He held off Gabriele Minì to take the victory, while Luke Browning finished third after Arvid Lindblad was penalised for causing a collision with Jak Crawford. 

By Martin Lloyd 

While Minì stayed close to Maini for large portions of the race, he was unable to overtake the Indian driver in the tight confines of the Circuit de Monaco. The DAMS driver had only scored one point in the first four rounds of the season before his Monaco sprint success.

“Yesterday’s qualifying was intense,” Maini said. “It was very close, so I was glad we were in the bubble to get reversed. Obviously, this is the sprint race and we all want to win the feature, but it’s still a win in Monaco. As a young kid from India playing F1 on the PlayStation, I never thought I’d be here and I’d be winning in the second tier. 

“I’m really grateful, grateful to the team as well. We’ve had a very rocky start with a lot of things going on – some in our control, some out – but our season starts today and there’s still a long way to go for us.”

Maini and Browning, who had qualified 10th and ninth for Sunday’s feature race, made up the front row for the sprint race, but Browning started poorly and lost places to Minì, Lindblad and Crawford off the line. Meanwhile, points leader and feature race polesitter Alex Dunne took to the pit lane exit on the inside of the corner to avoid a collision with Ritomo Miyata. 

The cars streamed up the hill towards Beau Rivage before dropping down to Mirabeau Haute, where Lindblad made a daring move on Crawford’s inside for third. The front-left corner of his car met Crawford’s rear right, however, pitching Crawford into a half-spin and back into Lindblad’s path. While Crawford fought to keep his DAMS pointing in the right direction, Browning snuck past him on the inside and into fourth place. 

On lap six, Lindblad was given a 10-second time penalty for causing the incident. His Campos team devised a unique strategy in response.

The lack of overtaking opportunities at Monaco meant that Lindblad was unlikely to be able to pass the Alpine juniors ahead of him, so Campos asked the Briton to back off and create a 12-second gap to Maini and Minì ahead. They then wanted him to eat into that gap in the closing stages after having distanced as many cars as possible before the end of the race. 

From 1.8s behind on lap six, Lindblad distanced himself from Minì by as much as 11.5s at the end of lap 11, when all of his work was undone. The safety car intervened to recover the stricken AIX of Joshua Dürksen, who had pulled over at the exit of Mirabeau Bas with suspension damage. Oliver Goethe had overtaken the Paraguayan at Mirabeau Haute earlier in the lap, but the pair made contact at the exit of the corner and Dürksen found the barrier. 

After the safety car pulled in at the end of lap 14, Lindblad worked to revive Campos’ strategy. He immediately dropped back from Maini and Minì and stretched the gap to 12.041s by lap 21 of 30. Campos then told him to push, and he quickly bridged the gap to the back of Minì, who had himself dropped back from Maini to attempt to set the fastest lap.

Campos’ strategy didn’t work perfectly, and much of the field closed their own gaps to second along with Lindblad. While the Red Bull junior drew alongside Minì as the chequered flag fell and finished just 0.061s behind, he was relegated to eighth after the penalty was applied, 0.532s away from seventh-placed Leonardo Fornaroli of Invicta Racing. 

Behind Maini and Minì, who were separated by 3.705s, Browning was elevated to third thanks to Lindblad’s penalty, ahead of Crawford in fourth and Richard Verschoor in fifth. Sebastián Montoya achieved his best finish since the opening race in Melbourne with sixth, while Fornaroli extended his points-scoring streak to eight races with his seventh-place finish.

There were few overtakes during the race except for Goethe’s moves forward – both in controversial circumstances. In addition to the pass on Dürksen that culminated in the AIX driver’s retirement, Goethe overtook Victor Martins at La Rascasse on lap 15, but they touched wheels mid-corner, causing the Frenchman to tap the barrier and sustain front wing damage. The MP Motorsport driver received a 10-second penalty for causing the collision.

Martins then took the fastest lap on new tyres after he had pitted to replace his front wing. Minì, Browning and Dunne all dropped back from those in front in an attempt to steal the fastest lap, but they were unable to match the Martins’ pace.

Still, with the Williams junior outside the top 10 in 17th, he did not take the extra point for the fastest lap. It instead went to ninth-place finisher Dunne, whose gap over Browning at the top of the drivers’ standings is now three points. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency