Roman Staněk won his first F2 feature race on Sunday in wet conditions despite originally finishing third on the road. He was promoted to victory after original winner Alex Dunne was penalised for a start procedure infringement and Arvid Lindblad, who finished second on the road, was disqualified for having tyre pressures below the accepted minimum levels. 

By Martin Lloyd 

Though rain was not falling for the entire race, earlier standing water meant that every driver started on wet tyres. The race began under safety car conditions following a period of torrential rain earlier in the morning that forced the abandonment of the F3 feature race. 

After three formation laps, the latter two of which meant the contest was shortened from 25 to 23 laps, the race finally began in anger, and polesitter Dunne of Rodin Motorsport led the field away ahead of ART Grand Prix’s Ritomo Miyata and Invicta Racing’s Staněk. 

The Czech driver immediately made a move on his Japanese counterpart into La Source and took second place. But he suffered a snap of oversteer at Eau Rouge and lost momentum, giving Miyata a chance to come back through at Les Combes.

Rain began falling again on the second racing lap, resulting in further issues with grip and visibility for the field. Out front, unaffected by another car’s spray, Dunne opened a gap of 2.3s on Miyata after two laps, though it slowly decreased as the Irishman struggled to maintain the grip in his wet tyres.

After the race, Dunne told Feeder Series that having clear air helped him manage the intensifying rain.

“When you’re in the lead,” he said, “it’s always very easy to say it’s too dangerous, let’s just not restart, because then I just bring it home and it’s an easy win.” 

Further back, the two Hitech cars were again showing the pace that had helped them rocket through the field in the wet feature race at Silverstone. Luke Browning and Dino Beganovic had qualified 12th and 13th respectively but had risen to 10th and 11th by the start of lap five.

At this time the gaps were also closing at the front, with Miyata just 1.2s behind Dunne and the next three competitors – Staněk, Victor Martins and Lindblad – all within a second of the driver in front. 

Martins in fourth, however, was struggling to keep his car within track limits. He received two five-second penalties for infringements on laps 10 and 11, which took him out of podium contention when he served them at his pit stop at the end of lap 11.

Staněk and sixth-placed Pepe Martí joined Martins in being the first frontrunners to pit on that lap. The hard-charging Beganovic had stopped a lap prior and used his warmer tyres to overhaul the Spaniard at Pouhon.

On lap 12, Dunne, Miyata, Lindblad and Browning responded. The big loser in the pitstop phase was Browning, who was to emerge a net fifth but spun on the pit exit and lost four places. 

The key winner was Staněk, who jumped Miyata. Staněk almost passed Dunne at Les Combes too but could not quite make the move for the net lead. The McLaren junior then moved more than two seconds clear as he brought his tyres up to temperature.

On lap 14, he arrived on the gearbox of Oliver Goethe, who had not pitted, but struggled to find a way past. As Staněk quickly closed in, he made a move around the outside of Pouhon and streaked clear again. 

Miyata passed Staněk at the final chicane on the same lap and was followed by Lindblad, who took third place at the exit of La Source. Miyata briefly threatened to close the four-second gap to Dunne, but he spun at Pouhon on lap 16 and fell to fourth place.

The safety car was then deployed on lap 18 after Sebastián Montoya spun at Eau Rouge and lost the engine, stopping on the left-hand side of the track at Raidillon. His car had been cleared by lap 21 as the field prepared for a potential return to green-flag conditions, but Goethe’s engine then dramatically expired at La Source.

As smoke billowed from the rear of the MP Motorsport car, it became clear that there would not be time to recover his car in the two remaining laps. Race control elected to bring out the red flag, and Dunne was declared the provisional winner. 

“For me, it was a combination of two things,” Dunne said about the decision not to restart the race. “Even in clear air with no one in front of me, I was still already massively struggling at Eau Rouge. 

“If you combine that with a restart when you’re not going to be able to see a whole lot, and then you also have 22 drivers who think, ‘This is a good opportunity to make up some places’, everyone is going to be sending it. If you combine those two things, it would have been pretty dangerous to restart, so I definitely think it was a good idea that we didn’t.”

After the race, the stewards announced that Dunne was under investigation for failing to engage the car’s start-up procedure at the start of the formation lap, a breach of article 1.6.1 of the F2 technical regulations and article 11.15 of the F2 system user manual.

More than three hours after the chequered flag, he was handed a 10-second penalty after being found guilty of the infringement. 

Dunne’s loss was initially Lindblad’s gain, and the Red Bull junior’s win was to represent his first podium since his feature race win in Barcelona. But it was announced in the F2 Technical Delegate’s Report, released at 14:45 local, that the tyre pressures on all four of Lindblad’s tyres were below the minimum specified by supplier Pirelli and thus not in conformity with the regulations.

The Campos Racing driver’s disqualification was posted at 15:23 CET, thus elevating Staněk to victory. 

Staněk had not won in F2 since his maiden series triumph in the Melbourne sprint race last season. The F2 third-year now also has his third podium in three rounds and sits 10th in the drivers’ standings.

“At the beginning of the race, the track condition was very good. It was perfect to race,” Staněk said. “We could see the track was wet just enough. When it started to rain in sector one, it was tricky, but at the same time you just have to wait for a safety car or a red flag.

“And until that point you can complain however much you want on the radio, but you just have to survive. There are another 22 guys who, if you just box and give up the race, they overtake you. In the end, nothing serious happened, and it was all fine.” 

Miyata’s first podium in two seasons of F2 competition came on a weekend when the ART Grand Prix driver showed consistent pace throughout. Behind him was Browning, who recovered to fifth on the road and third in the final classification after his spin. Martí was fourth ahead of sprint race winner Leonardo Fornaroli and Gabriele Minì in fifth and sixth respectively. Beganovic and Martins were seventh and eighth ahead of the Rodin pair of Dunne, who was relegated to ninth by his 10-second penalty, and Amaury Cordeel.

Dunne would have opened up a 15-point lead at the top of the drivers’ standings were it not for his penalty, while Lindblad could have closed the gap to the top five. Instead, those five are now separated by just 12 points.

Fornaroli has taken the championship lead with 125 points, with the Invicta driver three points ahead of Richard Verschoor on 122. Crawford is six points back on 116, with Dunne remaining in fourth place on 114 and Browning is one point back in fifth with 113. Martí, sixth on 85 points, now heads Lindblad by one point. 

Lindblad’s disqualification and Staněk’s victory means that Campos have also conceded the lead in the teams’ standings to Invicta. The British team are on 182 points, 13 points clear of Campos on 169, with both teams threatening a repeat of last season’s title battle. 

Editor’s note, 27 July 2025, 14:53 CEST: This article was updated after publication to reflect the changes to the order after original winner Alex Dunne received a 10-second post-race penalty.

Editor’s note, 27 July 2025, 15:40 CEST: This article was updated after publication once again to reflect Arvid Lindblad’s disqualification and Roman Staněk’s elevation to victory.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency