With the Austria round concluded, the Formula 2 season hit its halfway point, and Richard Verschoor, the series’ most experienced driver, leads the championship by 24 points. Feeder Series takes you through the narratives that developed this weekend and how they affect the season as a whole.

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Alex Dunne topped practice by 0.270 seconds before finishing fourth for McLaren on his F1 free practice debut later that day. Leonardo Fornaroli beat Victor Martins and Verschoor in a tight qualifying session that saw the top three separated by just 0.024s. Pepe Martí surged to sprint victory and Verschoor won the feature race, both of which had last-lap crashes in Turn 3.

• Qualifying report and quotes: Austria polesitter Fornaroli: ‘Gaps are very close’ because of F2’s high level
• Sprint race report and quotes: Martí takes home F2 victory for Red Bull after ‘scary’ flip for Meguetounif
• Feature race report and quotes: Verschoor on race win, title battle: ‘Every time when I’m there, Alex is there’

1. Dunne’s disqualification widens championship

A tight battle for the championship had emerged over the past few weeks and seemed to solidify on Sunday in Austria. At the end of the feature race, Verschoor and Dunne were separated by just 1.181s on track and six points off of it. Dunne had led Verschoor by three points going into Austria and one point after the sprint, so their 1-2 prompted a swap in the standings but promised a close fight to come. 

It was not to be. Dunne was disqualified from the feature race after his car failed to meet the minimum plank thickness requirements. His strong results through the season so far mean he’s still second in the standings, but he now faces a deficit of 24 points to Verschoor rather than six. With Fornaroli promoted to second and Jak Crawford to third, Dunne is only four and two points ahead of the drivers respectively. 

The 24-point gap is by no means insurmountable, especially in a championship as unpredictable as F2. In the post-race media session, Verschoor joked about not having been disqualified ‘yet’, something he’s faced five times in his four previous F2 seasons. Nevertheless, with the similarity of Dunne and Verschoor’s results so far – each have taken two feature race victories and have only finished outside of the top 10 once – Dunne’s disqualification buys Verschoor valuable breathing room.

2. Qualifying isn’t everything

For the fourth time this season, qualifying was decided by less than 0.025s, and the top three were split by less than a tenth for the third time. Those are remarkably fine margins. But while F1’s race results have been dictated by qualifying at times this year, F2 has been anything but. Only once has a driver converted pole position to feature race victory, when Arvid Lindblad did so in Barcelona. 

In Austria, neither driver on the front row was able to convert their starting position to a win. Although polesitter Fornaroli led for the first stint, a cautious decision to pit on lap eight – prompted by memories of losing time in the pit lane in Imola – caused him to be undercut by both Martins and Verschoor. Martins, who gained the lead in the pit stop cycle after falling to third at the start, was then unable to hold on to his position through his soft-tyre stint, fading to eighth on track before gaining a position with Dunne’s disqualification. 

On the other hand, several drivers made impressive recovery drives from poor qualifying positions, aided by the Red Bull Ring’s three consecutive DRS zones. Before his disqualification, Dunne had climbed from seventh to second after prevailing in a three-way battle with Fornaroli and Martí and later a duel with Martins. 

Crawford also had a strong comeback, going from 14th to fourth on track after a battle with Martins and Luke Browning before being promoted to the podium post-race. Browning had an impressive comeback of his own and was classified fifth after starting from 17th. He was helped by a strong first stint, during which he made it up to eighth before the pit stop cycle began. 

Sebastián Montoya was able to use the alternate strategy to his advantage, turning a 10th-place start to a fourth-place finish. He sealed his rise by overtaking Browning and Martins on the penultimate and final laps respectively. 

3. Turn 3 claims victims

Both the sprint and the feature race featured dramatic collisions at Turn 3. The Red Bull Ring includes an elevation change of 63.5 metres throughout the track, and the long uphill climb towards the circuit’s slowest corner means there is limited visibility of the apex from the bottom of the hill. 

The first collision at the corner was by far the scariest. On the second lap of the sprint race, Lindblad attempted to overtake Browning entering the corner at the same time as Meguetounif tried to pass Lindblad. But three drivers into one apex didn’t go, and Lindblad hit Browning as Meguetounif rolled over both. All three drivers were unhurt but unable to finish the race, which was red-flagged for a half hour as a result of the incident. 

On the final lap of the sprint race, Amaury Cordeel spun on his own at Turn 3 while closely following Joshua Dürksen and Roman Staněk. Richard Verschoor, more than three seconds behind, avoided Cordeel’s stopped car, but Gabriele Minì, Fornaroli and John Bennett were not so lucky, with all three of them piling into one another behind Cordeel. All four drivers were okay, and because the collision occurred on the last lap, it was managed by local yellows rather than a safety car. 

The feature race also ended with an incident at Turn 3 in which Lindblad collided with Oliver Goethe on the run to the corner. After they touched, Goethe spun, skidded over the inside sausage kerb and went airborne, flying across the track into the gravel trap, where his car stopped. While the previous collisions at the corner were deemed racing incidents, Lindblad received a 10-second post-race penalty for the incident with Goethe. 

4. Red Bull juniors find mixed fortunes at ‘home’ 

The trio of Red Bull Junior Team members had a lacklustre qualifying overall, with Martí placing ninth, Lindblad 12th and Goethe 16th. Further trouble came when Martí and Lindblad were each handed three-place grid drops for both races for impeding others during the session. 

For Martí, the penalty turned a front-row start for the sprint race into fifth on the grid, but he still made up the lost ground. He got a great start, slotting into third, then used Turn 3 to overtake Staněk for second on the first lap and Dürksen for first on lap 18. The victory made him the second Red Bull junior to win an F2 race at the team’s home circuit, and Martí took the best result for any Red Bull–affiliated driver across the weekend in all series. 

Martí also had the strongest results of the Red Bull trio in the feature race. He made up ground from 12th early on and engaged in a battle with Fornaroli for net third after the pit stops, passing the Invicta driver on lap 10 before being overtaken on lap 14. The pair caught up to Martins over the next 20 laps, but during their battle on lap 35, Martí hit the Frenchman from behind at Turn 4, incurring a 10-second penalty. He crossed the line fourth but was demoted to seventh, which became sixth with Dunne’s disqualification. 

Neither of the other Red Bull juniors left the weekend with any points. Lindblad failed to finish the sprint race after his collision with Browning and Meguetounif, while Goethe’s sprint was marred by a 10-second penalty for colliding with Dino Beganovic after the race restarted. Neither Lindblad nor Goethe finished the feature race after colliding on the last lap.

Austria was Lindblad’s worst weekend in F2 so far – and his first weekend without finishing in the top 10 in either race. He entered the weekend third in the championship, just eight points behind then-leader Dunne, but left sixth in the championship, 35 points off the lead. As Red Bull’s highest-regarded prospect, he will make his F1 free practice debut in Silverstone next weekend, but he’ll have to succeed in transitioning back to F2 machinery for qualifying – something that has hindered other top F2 drivers of late.

5. Have reliability woes returned?

Reliability was a major talking point in F2 last season, but it’s looked significantly better this year. In Austria, however, those problems returned en masse. 

Both DAMS drivers suffered mechanical issues in the sprint race. Crawford couldn’t make it off the line for the formation lap and had to be wheeled back into the garage, retiring from the race. Kush Maini initially did not leave pit lane for the restart after the red flag, although he eventually rejoined the race two laps down. 

In the feature race, Minì and Cordeel retired with engine issues as white smoke billowed from the back of their cars. Ritomo Miyata and Cian Shields also retired in the pits mid-race without apparent collision damage. 

Last year’s Spielberg round also featured a significant number of mechanical retirements. The circuit’s altitude of nearly 700m above sea level means there is thinner air in the atmosphere, which affects engine performance and cooling. Under those conditions, the car’s reliability is tested, making altitude a likely contributing factor to mechanical retirements. 

Results and standings after round 7 at Spielberg

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Leonardo Fornaroli, 1:15.229	Victor Martins, +0.014s	Richard Verschoor, +0.024s
Sprint race (28 laps)	Pepe Martí, 1:11:03.819	Joshua Dürksen, +2.983s	Roman Staněk, +3.247s
Feature race (40 laps)	Richard Verschoor, 53:36.455	Leonardo Fornaroli, +9.743	Jak Crawford, +17.171

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Richard Verschoor, 114	Campos Racing, 146
P2	Alex Dunne, 90	MP Motorsport, 126
P3	Jak Crawford, 88	Hitech, 114
P4	Leonardo Fornaroli, 86	DAMS, 109
P5	Luke Browning, 83	Invicta Racing, 109
P6	Arvid Lindblad, 79	Rodin Motorsport, 92
P7	Pepe Martí, 67	Prema Racing, 74
P8	Sebastián Montoya, 53	ART Grand Prix, 55
P9	Victor Martins, 49	AIX Racing, 19
P10	Dino Beganovic, 31	Van Amersfoort Racing, 10

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency