Junior series races in Monaco are rarely without drama, and this weekend’s Formula 2 round was no exception. Feeder Series walks you through several drivers whose mixed fortunes dictated the results.

By Calla Kra-Caskey

The weekend began with Victor Martins setting the pace in practice on Thursday, but Alex Dunne, the points leader entering the round, beat him to pole by just 0.003 seconds. The two came to blows in the first corner of the feature race, causing a pile-up involving half the grid, and a late safety car and a second red flag meant Jak Crawford snatched first place – and eventually victory – from longtime leader Leonardo Fornaroli. The sprint race wasn’t without chaos either, with almost every pass for position after the opening lap coming with contact. 

• Pre-weekend roundtable: F2 and F3 qualifying at Monaco: The unique format as explained by drivers
• Qualifying report and quotes: F2 points leader Dunne says Monaco pole lap ‘wasn’t the cleanest’
• Sprint race report and quotes: Monaco F2 sprint race winner Maini: ‘I never thought I’d be here’
• Feature race report and quotes: Crawford survives first-corner pile-up to win bizarre F2 feature in Monaco

1. Red flag decisions dictate feature race results

The Monaco feature race featured two red flags, the first after Dunne and Martins’ first-corner collision that collected half of the field and the second after Dino Beganovic found the barriers in the final minutes of the race. Each time, race control’s decisions around the flag massively impacted the results. 

After the collision involving Dunne and Martins, several cars were stuck but not damaged, including those of Amaury Cordeel, Ritomo Miyata and Gabriele Minì. 

F2 rules state that a car’s receiving outside assistance to rejoin a race may cause its driver to be disqualified from the session, and an FIA representative told Feeder Series that damaged cars were not allowed to continue for the sake of time. These rules were applied inconsistently at best, however. 

Cordeel’s car was collected by a crane and returned to the pit lane, from where he took the restart and eventually came home eighth. Miyata and Minì were instructed by marshals to leave their cars, and despite sustaining no apparent terminal damage, the pair were not allowed to participate in the restart.

Later in the race, on lap 14, Dino Beganovic crashed. This initially caused a virtual safety car period, during which drivers were unable to pit and change tyres. But shortly after the leading trio of Fornaroli, Sebastián Montoya and Arvid Lindblad passed pit entry, the VSC was upgraded to a full safety car, giving Crawford, running fourth and having yet to pass the pit entry, a cheap pit stop.

When Fornaroli, Montoya, and Lindblad eventually pitted, they all emerged behind Crawford, and a red flag on lap 18 ended the race without any further green-flag racing. Race control’s hesitancy to call either a red flag or a full safety car earlier on ultimately handed Crawford his second win of the year.

2. Lindblad shows pace despite errors

Lindblad was quick throughout the weekend, although his results were hampered by costly mistakes in each session.

The Red Bull junior qualified sixth overall, third in his group behind Martins and Richard Verschoor, but a second-row start was likely on the cards for him. Lindblad locked up at the Nouvelle Chicane on a late flyer after setting a purple first sector on a late flyer. He went even faster in sector one on his final lap but ultimately ended up 0.023s behind Verschoor, who was second in the group. 

Starting the sprint race fifth, Lindblad immediately made up a position after Luke Browning got a poor start. The Campos driver attempted to pass Crawford into Turn 5 but collided with him, making up the place on track but earning a 10-second penalty. 

On instruction from his engineer, Lindblad backed up the pack before pushing later in the race in an attempt to mitigate positions lost at the end. He received the order to push on lap 21 of 30, catching up to the back of Minì in second in six laps. After the penalty was applied, Lindblad dropped from third to eighth, taking the final point available. 

Lindblad started the feature race from sixth and avoided the Dunne-Martins collision. That meant he was third on the restart, and he remained there behind Fornaroli and Montoya for most of the race.

Lindblad jumped Montoya during the pit cycle but emerged in third anyways as a result of Crawford’s safety car pit stop. Yet after the race, Lindblad received a penalty for speeding in the pit lane and dropped to fifth, earning five points under the partial points allocation for the shortened race. 

The British driver was certainly not the only driver to have made mistakes this weekend, though in a weekend punctuated by a major accident, he kept himself out of the wall. He has also been the faster Campos for several weekends running, but a legitimate title charge will require him to smooth out errors like these.

3. Martins’ qualifying consistency persists, as does bad luck

Victor Martins has shown impressive pace on Fridays in his third year in the series, qualifying in the top three at every round so far. This weekend, for instance, he led qualifying group A by more than three tenths before being beaten to pole by group B’s Dunne by just 0.003s. His sprint races and feature races, however, have been hampered by torrid luck, and that pattern continued in Monaco. 

In Australia, Martins was set to start the feature race from pole position before it was cancelled because of rain. In Imola, a stall on the formation lap for Montoya briefly promoted Martins to second before he too stalled at the start, ultimately going pointless. He also lost points because of early incidents in the Australia and Bahrain sprint races. 

Martins’ bad luck continued in Monaco, where he was involved in a collision in each of the races. In the sprint, Martins ran in ninth until Oliver Goethe collided with him in an attempted overtake at Turn 18 shortly after the safety car restart, for which the MP Motorsport driver was given a 10-second penalty. Martins set the fastest lap after changing his front wing and ultimately finished 17th. 

The Frenchman’s luck only worsened in the feature race. He got a much better start than polesitter Dunne, but the Rodin driver, unwilling to concede first place, collided with Martins in the first corner, causing half the field to pile up behind them. Martins’ car was stuffed into the barrier and he took zero points away from the weekend, with his results once again failing to show his true pace. While he’s been one of the fastest drivers in the field, he sits eighth in the standings, 37 points off the lead. 

4. Dunne causes chaos from pole

Dunne’s feature race victory in Imola, his second of the year, was impressive, as he made several overtakes and navigated traffic effectively on his drive from fifth to first. After the race, he told Feeder Series he had been working to ‘be calm’ and ‘rein it in’ when facing challenging situations in races. To that end, his racecraft there showed a visible improvement from Bahrain, where he was involved in three separate incidents in the sprint race.

But several collisions across the Monaco weekend showed that he still has a tendency for overoptimistic moves. During qualifying, Dunne hit Rafael Villagómez at Turn 19 while attempting to pass him for track position. Villagómez ended up in the wall and could not complete any flying laps, while Dunne put his Rodin in pole position. The stewards did not penalise either driver for causing a collision or a red flag. 

In the feature race, Martins passed Dunne for first heading into the first corner. But instead of recognizing that he had lost the position and either backing off or cutting the corner, Dunne clung to the apex on Martins’ inside. His front left tyre collided with Martins’ rear right, and the pair – as well as half of the field behind them – ended up in the wall.

Dunne’s move directly caused seven retirements and a lengthy red flag. He received a drive-through penalty converted to a 10-place grid drop for the next race in which he participates, set to be the sprint in Barcelona. 

Dunne also lost the lead in the championship, dropping three points behind Browning. His opportunism paid dividends on his two previous drives to victory, but he’ll need to rein it in a bit more in order to regain the points lead. 

5. Prema bounce back with podiums for Montoya and Minì

Prema took their first two F2 podiums of the year in Monaco, with Minì second in the sprint race and Montoya third in the feature race. The Italian unit have looked to be in their best form of the season, although they were also strong in the Principality last year. 

Both drivers qualified in the top 10. Minì was fourth in group A and eighth on the feature race grid, while Montoya was third in group B and fifth on the feature race grid. This meant Minì started the sprint race from third, and he made it to second after Browning’s slow start from the front row. He looked quick throughout the sprint, running within half a second of Maini for most of the first half of the race. 

For Montoya, who struggled on Fridays in F3 last year, his Monaco qualifying result continued an upturn in form that began at Imola, where he qualified second but stalled on the grid. In the Monaco feature race, he stalled at the beginning of the formation lap once again, but because the restart following Dunne and Martins’ crash used the original grid order without the damaged cars, Montoya lined up second.

He remained there until the final safety car period, during which Crawford jumped to first and Montoya fell to fourth as a result of the pit stop cycle. Lindblad’s post-race penalty elevated the Colombian to third again, giving him his maiden F2 podium.

“We’re extremely grateful for these results because there’s been times this year where we’ve been extremely quick and we haven’t been able to get the results we wanted,” Montoya told Feeder Series. “We’ll take this. It’s good motivation for us. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing because I feel like we’re doing a good job, and in the end we want to win.”

Results and standings after round 5 at Monaco

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying group A	Victor Martins, 1:21.145	Richard Verschoor, +0.375s	Arvid Lindblad, +0.398s
Qualifying group B	Alex Dunne, 1:21.142	Leonardo Fornaroli, +0.546s	Sebastián Montoya, +0.598s
Sprint race (30 laps)	Kush Maini, 44:57.639	Gabriele Minì, +3.705s	Luke Browning, +7.299s
Feature race (16 laps)	Jak Crawford, 1:04:00.825	Leonardo Fornaroli, +6.693s	Sebastián Montoya, +8.205s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Luke Browning, 70	Hitech, 99
P2	Alex Dunne, 67	Campos Racing, 92
P3	Leonardo Fornaroli, 64	Invicta Racing, 76
P4	Richard Verschoor, 59	DAMS, 71
P5	Jak Crawford, 56	MP Motorsport, 71
P6	Arvid Lindblad, 51	Rodin Motorsport, 69
P7	Pepe Martí, 41	Prema Racing, 38
P8	Victor Martins, 33	ART Grand Prix, 36
P9	Dino Beganovic, 29	AIX Racing, 11
P10	Gabriele Minì, 20	Van Amersfoort Racing, 4

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Additional reporting by Martin Lloyd

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency