Leonardo Fornaroli was the only Formula 2 championship protagonist to find success around the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Saturday’s sprint race, as Alex Dunne finished seventh and Richard Verschoor, Jak Crawford and Luke Browning collided. Fornaroli was joined on the podium by Victor Martins and Gabriele Miní, both of whom tasted podium champagne for the first time in several months. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Starting third, Invicta Racing’s Fornaroli got an excellent launch, going up the inside of polesitter Oliver Goethe and making it to first before the first corner. Goethe lost another position to Amaury Cordeel while Martins rocketed around the outside of Pepe Martí and Arvid Lindblad to slot into fourth. 

“It was my goal to overtake one or two cars into T1. All the practice starts were good yesterday, so I knew we had great potential,” Fornaroli told assembled media after the race. 

The midpack didn’t make it through the first few corners as cleanly. Title contenders Verschoor, Browning and Crawford went three-wide exiting La Source and made contact, pushing the latter pair into the gravel. Although Crawford was able to continue, Browning was stranded.

Verschoor, whose car was damaged in the incident, then spun into Eau Rouge. The others avoided him, and he was able to limp back to the pits before retiring. 

A virtual and then full safety car was called while marshals recovered Browning’s stranded Hitech machine. Fornaroli took the restart at the end of lap three early, and Martí lost a front wing endplate without contact. 

The next few laps proceeded quietly. Ritomo Miyata dropped from eighth to 10th as Dunne and Staněk passed him into Les Combes on laps four and five respectively. On lap seven, Minì attempted an overtake on Lindblad, who bravely fended him off through Les Combes. Dunne then attempted to pass Minì at the Bruxelles hairpin but couldn’t find a gap.

Martins, meanwhile, looked to be the fastest man on track. On lap nine, he made it past Goethe on the Kemmel straight for third and set his sights on Cordeel in second. Three laps later, he passed the Rodin Motorsport driver around the outside of Les Combes, but Cordeel, attempting to keep the position, touched wheels with the ART Grand Prix car and ended up stranded in the gravel, causing a second safety car. 

With six laps remaining, many drivers scrambled for the pits, as drivers perhaps remembered the Spanish sprint earlier this year. There, the fresh rubber proved massively advantageous and the leaders who had maintained track position quickly fell victim to those on softs. 

Only Fornaroli in first, Martins in second, Goethe in third, Minì in fifth and Cian Shields in 16th opted to go for track position and keep their medium tyres. Campos attempted a double stack with Martí fourth and Lindblad sixth, and the latter paid the price, leaving the pits 11th. 

“With Cordeel we created the safety car,” Martins explained, “and I was like, ‘Come on. I’m P2 now, I create the safety car, then the people are going on softs and then they will catch me and overtake me back.’ It was a bit difficult to manage the situation.”

“I knew it was going to be difficult, also because this circuit is very long so they had lots of corners to recover,” Fornaroli said. “I had Victor behind, [who has] a lot of experience and is very quick, so I knew it was not going to be easy. 

“But I felt super good with the car. Like Silverstone, I managed to be quick at the start but without destroying the tyres. After the safety car restart I was able to push and improve my lap times, and like this I was able to stay in front.”

The race restarted promptly on lap 14, leaving five laps for the soft-shod cars to make up ground. At first, it seemed as though it would be a walk in the park: Shields, the last of the drivers on mediums, dropped from fifth to 11th on the first lap after the restart. But the lead drivers from that group found it much harder to pass Goethe, who had been passed by Minì on the restart, and resorted to squabbling for position amongst themselves. 

“In the end, we [the drivers on mediums] had been lucky that there was only one lap under safety car, so the others had to do out-push, and without warming up the tyres it’s quite complicated,” Minì said about why those on fresher tyres may have struggled to make up ground. 

Dunne retook the place he had previously lost to Staněk into La Source on lap 15, putting him sixth on track and second behind Martí among those who had pitted. He attempted the same move on Martí on the next lap with less success, backing off into Eau Rouge. He backed off again into Les Combes rather than attempt to go three-wide with Martí and Staněk, dropping back behind Staněk into seventh. 

On lap 17 of 18, Sami Meguetounif slowed to a stop on the Kemmel straight with an apparent mechanical issue. The ensuing safety car deployment effectively ended the race, and Fornaroli took the chequered flag first a lap later. He was followed by Martins and Minì, both returning to the podium after long absences.

For Martins, that podium-free streak has lasted since round three in Jeddah, where he was third in the feature race. He’d only qualified lower than fourth once since then, but his qualifying consistency hasn’t translated into race pace. 

“Before was on purpose,” he joked. 

“These last few races were always tough because I was always starting either P2, P1 or P3 most of the time,” he told Feeder Series, “and every time we had either something that prevented us to race and get some data during the sprint or in feature race. Or lately there was some races where we were just missing and struggling with myself in the car and with the tyres.”

Martins said that his team had been working on finding those issues and that today’s result gave him confidence that their process has been working. 

“We are not really sitting here and not doing anything and hoping it’s going to be good one day. We are just trying and I think today was really good,” he said. 

“In the end, today, what we can really rely on is getting a nice and strong pace. I was feeling super confident in the car, super good, and I think tonight will be good to analyse things and see what went wrong and what went really good on what we changed. It’s just bringing confidence and good hopes for the future rounds.”

Despite decreasing the gap to championship leader Verschoor to eight points, Fornaroli said he was trying to keep himself from getting too confident.

“It’s going to be hard,” he said. “Eight points to the championship lead means nothing still because we have many rounds to go and also because tomorrow everything can happen.”

Goethe finished fourth on mediums ahead of Martí, Staněk and Dunne. Miyata finished eighth, while Lindblad in ninth took home the bonus point for setting the fastest lap on lap 15. John Bennett took home his first top-10 finish of the season in 10th.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency