Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli won his first Formula 2 feature race Sunday at the Hungaroring, finishing ahead of teammate Roman Staněk to secure the team’s first 1-2 finish since 2021 and extend his advantage in the drivers’ standings to 17 points.

By Tori Turner 

Rain earlier this morning left the track still somewhat damp at the start of the race, though all drivers opted to start on slicks as opposed to wet tyres. The race directors chose to have a rolling start because of the track conditions, which allowed polesitter Staněk to lead the field comfortably into Turn 1 ahead of Fornaroli and Jak Crawford.

The order in the top six remained unchanged in the opening laps of the race, but Victor Martins dropped from seventh to 11th after running wide at Turn 2 on the second lap.

On lap three, Alex Dunne challenged Arvid Lindblad for seventh at Turn 1, but the Red Bull junior put up a stern defence to keep the position. Up ahead, Luke Browning tried an attack of his own the next lap into Turn 1 to try to snatch third from Crawford, but the American cut back through Turn 2 to maintain his position.

On lap six, Amaury Cordeel stopped on the start-finish straight after his engine expired, causing a virtual safety car deployment. When racing resumed at the end of lap seven, Lindblad was right on the tail of Oliver Goethe in sixth. He overtook Goethe down the inside of Turn 1, then passed Joshua Dürksen after the AIX Racing driver ran wide at Turn 2 to move up to fifth. 

Another virtual safety car period occurred on lap 10 when Martins stopped between Turns 12 and 13 with another suspected mechanical issue. With drivers still unable to pit under virtual safety car conditions, several slowed before pit entry to put themselves in position to pit if the full safety car was deployed. But with the marshals able to recover Martins’ car swiftly, no such escalation was needed.

At the next restart on lap 11, Goethe ran wide out of the penultimate corner, and Dunne took advantage of the MP Motorsport driver’s error to pass both him and Dürksen for sixth. Having to defend from Dürksen into Turn 2, Dunne locked up and flat-spotted his soft tyres but held on to his position, even staying out longer than his rivals. 

The frontrunners on the soft tyres began to pit on lap 14. Browning, Dürksen, Goethe and Gabriele Minì all came in that lap, while race leader Staněk entered pit lane on lap 15 with the remaining soft-shod runners apart from Fornaroli and Dunne. 

Staněk’s early pit stop and Fornaroli’s decision to stay out for an extra lap proved to be crucial. When the Italian driver pitted on lap 16, he came out several seconds ahead of his teammate, executing a perfect overcut.

“I’ll have to look back on it, what happened there. I think Leo just made a simple overcut,” Staněk said about the pit stop. “At the same time, when he was in front of me, I tried to catch him. I was close for a couple of laps, but he was just better today. He escaped me and I couldn’t keep up with him because I was struggling with my car balance a little bit, so I didn’t want to ruin the tyres.”

But Fornaroli was handed a five-second time penalty on lap 20 for exceeding the pit lane speed limit by 2.8 kilometres per hour, which put him at risk of losing a possible victory.

“I knew something wasn’t good in the pit entry because I had the 50 kilometres per hour after the line, so I said, ‘Okay, maybe we’re at risk.’ My engineer was not telling me anything, maybe not to scare me, but I wanted to know to be able to push or not,” Fornaroli said. 

On lap 22, Verschoor was the first of the drivers on the alternate strategy to switch from mediums to softs. Lindblad followed suit on the next lap but had a slow stop due to an issue with the right-front tyre and rejoined behind Browning. Campos Racing teammate Pepe Martí, who won yesterday’s sprint race, also had an issue of his own with his right-rear tyre when he pitted on lap 25. 

The bigger story, however, was developing out front. On lap 20, Crawford closed to within a second of Staněk, who was himself less than a second behind Fornaroli. Staněk, however, kept the DAMS driver at bay over the race’s second half even as he gradually fell away from Fornaroli. In doing so, he ensured that Crawford could not pass and try to get within five seconds of Fornaroli himself.

At the start of lap 28, Crawford attempted to take net second away from Staněk into Turn 1 but ran wide, which handed the position back to Staněk entering Turn 2. By then, Fornaroli was four seconds in front and catching race leader Ritomo Miyata, who had yet to pit. Fornaroli subsequently passed him at the start of lap 31 with a move into Turn 1. 

By that point, Fornaroli had 6.5s in hand over his teammate, enough to win even with the penalty applied. A safety car deployment would have closed the gaps and destroyed his race, but the race remained green and Fornaroli crossed the line 7.165s ahead of Staněk when the chequered flag fell on lap 37. With that, Invicta Racing secured their first 1-2 in the series since the opening race of the 2021 Monaco round.

“I was praying every lap,” Fornaroli said. “I was watching the big screens to see if something was happening. In the last laps, I actually saw that some cars were fighting and I was saying, ‘Please don’t touch. Don’t do anything bad.’ Luckily, nothing happened. We won the race and I’m super happy.”

As a result of his first feature race win, the championship has now swung in Fornaroli’s favour by 17 points. Crawford, who came home third for the second race in succession, sits second on 137 points, with fifth-place finisher Richard Verschoor not far behind on 135 and fourth-place finisher Browning fourth in the standings on 125.

Having battled with and passed fellow Red Bull junior Goethe for sixth at Turn 9 shortly after his pit stop, Lindblad scored his first points in three races following his disqualification from the Belgium feature race. Dino Beganovic finished seventh after fighting Lindblad in the final laps but failing to get past, while Goethe finished eighth to secure his fifth points finish of the season and first double points finish in one weekend.

Title contender Dunne finished ninth, adding only two points to his running total whilst his rivals secured large sums. He is one point behind Browning in fifth, while Martí, who is sixth in the standings, finished the race 10th and earned one point to bump his tally to 97.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency