Leonardo Fornaroli won his first race in 1,491 days at Silverstone in the Formula 2 feature race on Saturday. The Invicta Racing driver finished 1.404s clear of Sebastián Montoya, while his teammate Roman Staněk came home third. 

By Martin Lloyd

Polesitter Fornaroli was immediately overtaken by Kush Maini, who started second, but the Italian driver made a daring move on the inside of Maini at Luffield and drew alongside on the Silverstone National pit straight before completing the pass on the inside into Copse.

From that point, he was never threatened at the front. There was chaos behind him, with a collision between Alex Dunne and Gabriele Minì as well as a seven-car train for third place, but after his first-lap move, Fornaroli’s win seemed the most likely outcome.

The victory was only the second in single-seaters for Fornaroli, who won the 2024 F3 drivers’ title without winning a race and the 2022 FRegional Europe rookie title without either a class or overall victory. His previous car racing victory came on 5 June 2021 at Vallelunga in the second round of that year’s Italian F4 season.

After the race, Fornaroli spoke to selected media including Feeder Series at the post-race press conference, where he discussed the mental process behind his crucial move on Maini.

“I said, ‘No, please, I have to regain that P1!’” Fornaroli said. “We fought quite a bit going into T7. Then luckily, I managed to repass him. There was no safety car, so it was like a qualifying race. I knew I had to have a nice gap to the P2 guy before the big DRS zones; otherwise, they were going to pass me. 

“It was fun. I’m very happy about the tyre management and everything because I was able to arrive at a good condition at the end to be able to fight with Sebastián. It was quite close. We were pushing like crazy.”

Further back, Montoya moved into third from sixth on the grid, passing Staněk and Richard Verschoor as well as the empty grid slot of formation-lap staller Dino Beganovic. Verschoor was swallowed up after a sluggish getaway that dropped him to 10th from fourth on the grid. 

Two DRS trains – one led by Fornaroli, the other by Arvid Lindblad in eighth – snaked around the 5.891-kilometre Silverstone Circuit in the opening third of the race. Luke Browning passed Lindblad at The Loop on lap seven and escaped, but the next lap, as Minì attempted to move around the outside of Dunne at the same spot, his front wing connected with Dunne’s right-rear tyre, resulting in damage for both. 

Mini lost his front-left endplate but continued, while Dunne’s tyre delaminated and eventually escaped its wheel rim. The Irishman pitted and fell nearly a lap down before retiring on lap 15. The stewards handed Minì a 10-second time penalty upon deeming that Minì ‘had no right to space’ on Dunne’s outside. 

At the front of the field, Fornaroli broke free from Maini’s DRS range on lap 10. With the race leader’s surge in pace, the DAMS driver was forced to defend second position from Montoya behind and was passed by the Prema Racing driver into Stowe on lap 15.

That left Montoya with the challenge of closing a two-second gap to Fornaroli as he sought his own first victory since the third FR Asia round in February 2022. The Colombian-American quickly broke away from the struggling Maini, who soon had six cars stacked up behind him, but he wasn’t able to get within a second of Fornaroli to challenge for the win.

Still, the result was the Prema rookie’s fourth consecutive top-five finish – a stark contrast with his three top-five finishes across two F3 seasons. Key to his success has been an improvement in qualifying form. He has qualified in the top 10 in four of the eight rounds this season, while in his final F3 campaign last season, he only qualified in the top 10 three times, all in the season’s second half.

“I said last year that as soon as I started qualifying at the front my results would show because the speed is there,” Montoya told Feeder Series at the press conference.

“Jumping into the F2 car was quite a big step, I have to say. It is quite similar. Everyone says that it’s not as big [a step up] as people would think to say the least, but at least for me, in the fine details, there is quite a big difference. 

“Compared to the F3 car I was driving last year, this car is extremely different, and the team have done an amazing job, especially my engineer [Carlo Cristofori],” he continued. “When you’re surrounded with people who have the same goal as you, you all work for the same thing, and I think everyone’s seeing the results.”

At the head of the seven-car DRS train that formed in the race’s late stages, Maini impressively held off Staněk until the penultimate lap, when Staněk drew ahead on the outside of Stowe. He went off track as he completed the overtake but kept the position, coming home third for his second consecutive sprint race podium. 

Maini hung on to fourth place, while Joshua Dürksen beat  DAMS’ Jak Crawford by just one thousandth of a second to finish fifth. 

“In this one it’s only a point,” Crawford told Feeder Series in the paddock afterwards. “I feel like I was in a position of attack anyway, so to lose out is almost worth it if it’s for a thousandth, to only lose out by that little margin. I’m not disappointed anyway. It’s worth one point, which of course I would love, but at the end of the day we’re here for the 25 on Sunday.”

Williams juniors Luke Browning and Victor Martins collided on the final lap, when Browning tried a move around the outside of Luffield for seventh. Browning picked up front wing damage but completed the pass, while Verschoor also passed Martins after the collision. A 10-second post-race penalty for Browning elevated Verschoor to seventh and Martins to eighth, meaning the Dutchman finished with a 20-point advantage over Fornaroli at the head of the standings.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency