The ninth round of the Formula 2 season featured a dry sprint race and a wet feature race at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. Richard Verschoor and Jak Crawford, who entered the weekend 1-2 in the drivers’ championship, failed to score points across the weekend, shaking up the standings. Feeder Series takes you through the most important narratives that emerged in Belgium. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Through most of the weekend, it looked like everything was coming up Alex Dunne. He led practice and dominated qualifying, taking pole by 0.419s. After scoring points in the sprint, he cruised to a dominant feature race victory in the rain… until he was penalised post-race for failing to engage the start set-up procedure. He lost his win to Roman Staněk and the championship lead he’d just acquired to Leonardo Fornaroli, who won his second consecutive sprint race and finished fifth in the feature race.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: Beganovic has ‘extra confidence’ for Spa after starring in wet Silverstone
• Qualifying report and quotes: Spa polesitter Dunne says he would’ve been more surprised if he wasn’t on pole
• Sprint race report and quotes: Fornaroli beats Martins to Spa sprint victory despite ‘difficult’ late restart
• Feature race report and quotes: Staněk inherits F2 feature win in Spa after Dunne, Lindblad penalised

1. Fornaroli rides consistency to championship lead

Last year, Leonardo Fornaroli took the F3 title without winning a single race, the first time that had happened in series history. And while winning back-to-back sprint races in F2 means repeating the feat this year would be impossible, he’s shown in the past few weeks that he can pair his trademark consistency with race-winning pace. 

He lined up third on the reverse grid for the sprint, but an excellent start propelled him to the lead by the first corner. He managed the race brilliantly, maintaining his lead through two safety car restarts.

During the second safety car period, Fornaroli was one of only five drivers who didn’t switch his used medium tyres for scrubbed softs. Although it initially seemed that the final five laps would be a repeat of the Barcelona sprint race, in which fresh softs allowed drivers further back to surge past those on old hards, Fornaroli held on to take victory. 

In the feature race, the Italian struggled with his tyres on the first stint, dropping from sixth to 10th before the pit cycle. A quick pit stop and better second stint meant he took the chequered flag seventh, which became fifth after two drivers ahead of him received penalties. 

Still, it was Fornaroli’s consistency rather than his sprint race victory that truly gave him the championship lead. Of the top five in the championship, only Fornaroli and Alex Dunne qualified in the top 10 this weekend. The 21-point total Fornaroli took from the weekend was the highest of the top five in the standings, second only to his Invicta teammate Staněk’s 28-point haul. Fornaroli has taken points in all but two races this season – the Barcelona feature and Austria sprint, both of which he failed to finish – giving him the most points finishes of any driver on the grid. 

2. Other championship hopefuls struggle

While Fornaroli surged, Richard Verschoor and Jak Crawford faltered. Neither managed to score points this weekend, meaning they dropped from first and second in the championship to second and third. 

The weekend started out well for both drivers, with Verschoor taking seventh place and Crawford fifth place in practice. In qualifying, however, the MP driver was 11th and the DAMS driver 14th, meaning they both missed out on Saturday’s reverse grid.

In the sprint, they were involved in a collision with fellow championship contender Luke Browning as the trio went three-wide out of La Source on the first lap. Browning and Crawford ended up in the gravel, and while Crawford recovered to finish just outside the points in 10th, Verschoor spun at Eau Rouge and retired in the pits. They were also invisible in the feature race, with Crawford finishing 17th and Verschoor 18th.

The pair have had remarkably similar seasons, with three victories, a second place and a third place apiece. Their double non-scores at Spa maintained the six-point gap between them, while the difference between the top five in the championship – Fornaroli, Verschoor, Crawford, Dunne, and Browning – shrunk to just 12 points. 

Dunne and Browning’s Spa rounds fell between Fornaroli’s and Crawford and Verschoor’s in terms of success. Although Dunne drove brilliantly on Sunday, he lost a win to a non-racing penalty and took only six points from the weekend. Browning recovered from his Saturday non-finish by climbing from 12th to fifth on Sunday, which became third after penalties were applied. 

3. A feature race with three winners

Dunne initially looked like this weekend’s big winner, both in terms of the feature race – which he dominated – and the championship. For a few hours after he crossed the finish line in Spa, he held a 15-point lead in the championship. However, the stewards found he had failed to engage the start set-up procedure at the beginning of the formation lap and handed him a 10-second penalty. With the race ending under safety car conditions, the penalty dropped him to 10th, although he was eventually promoted to ninth. 

Previous instances of failing to engage the set-up procedure have resulted in the offending driver’s disqualification. Stewards did not explain any mitigating circumstances this time but noted that Dunne did so under Rodin’s instructions. 

After Dunne’s penalty was applied, Lindblad inherited the race win. The Campos driver had looked strong in the rain, climbing from fifth to second during the race. He had already been investigated post-race for driving through the Invicta pit box, for which he was given a driving reprimand, but he was once again referred to the stewards when his tyre pressures were found to have fallen below the Pirelli-specified minima. As a result, Lindblad was promptly disqualified from the race. 

The 25 points for victory would’ve put Lindblad firmly back in championship contention, 14 points off the lead. His disqualification, however, means he’s 41 points behind Fornaroli and seventh in the championship. 

Staněk was therefore promoted from third, his position when he took the chequered flag, to first, his inaugural win of the season and second in three years of F2. He had a strong feature race, trading places with Ritomo Miyata multiple times before being passed by Lindblad on lap 15 into La Source. Even without the two penalties for drivers ahead of him, it would’ve been Staněk’s strongest race of the season; his promotion to victory was the icing on the cake.

4. Miyata takes much-needed first podium

A Super Formula and Super GT champion in his native Japan in 2023, Miyata has struggled in his transition to European single-seaters. His previous best F2 result was fifth in both Melbourne races last year, and he ultimately finished 19th in the championship for Rodin. This weekend, he took a breakthrough first F2 podium in the feature race in his most complete F2 weekend yet.

Miyata took second in qualifying, his best such result in the series and only his second time outqualifying ART Grand Prix teammate Victor Martins this season. He had a quiet sprint race on Saturday, starting ninth and finishing in eighth by virtue of Amaury Cordeel’s retirement and Lindblad’s slow pit stop, although he was overtaken by several drivers on track.

In the feature race, Miyata was initially passed by Staněk before the Invicta driver went off at Eau Rouge on the first racing lap, giving the ART driver the momentum to get back past. Staněk then undercut him during the pit stop sequence, but Miyata passed him again at the end of lap 14 in a daring move through the bus stop chicane.

A podium looked likely until he spun at Pouhon on lap 16 and dropped to fourth behind Lindblad and Staněk. He took the chequered flag in that position, but post-race penalties promoted Miyata to a podium finish. By scoring in both races for only the second time in his F2 career, Miyata has risen to 14th overall with 25 points, putting him well on track to outscore his 2024 total.

Results and standings after round 9 at Spa

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Alex Dunne, 1:57.151	Ritomo Miyata, +0.419s	Roman Staněk, +0.425s
Sprint race (18 laps)	Leonardo Fornaroli, 41:49.222	Victor Martins, +0.601s	Gabriele Minì, +1.271s
Feature race (19 laps)	Roman Staněk, 46:15.274	Ritomo Miyata, +1.790s	Luke Browning, +2.413s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Leonardo Fornaroli, 125	Invicta Racing, 182
P2	Richard Verschoor, 122	Campos Racing, 169
P3	Jak Crawford, 116	Hitech, 163
P4	Alex Dunne, 114	DAMS, 142
P5	Luke Browning, 113	MP Motorsport, 139
P6	Pepe Martí, 85	Rodin Motorsport, 117
P7	Arvid Lindblad, 84	Prema Racing, 107
P8	Sebastián Montoya, 72	ART Grand Prix, 89
P9	Victor Martins, 64	AIX Racing, 23
P10	Roman Staněk, 57	Van Amersfoort Racing, 11

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency