Invicta Racing’s Roman Staněk took his second Formula 2 pole position of the season on Friday in Abu Dhabi, beating out Jak Crawford by 0.087 seconds. Leonardo Fornaroli, who won the drivers’ championship last time out in Qatar, was third, 0.134s slower than his Invicta teammate. 

By Martin Lloyd

Fornaroli may have won the drivers’ title last weekend in Qatar, but this weekend at Yas Marina, the final round of the 2025 F2 season, is still hugely important to Invicta. They enter with a 35-point lead in the teams’ standings over Hitech in second place and will gain two points on their rivals with Staněk’s points for pole position. 

The 1-3 qualifying result is a huge boost to the Norfolk-based team’s hopes of becoming double champions for the second successive season, especially with the Hitech duo of Dino Beganovic and Luke Browning starting fourth and 17th respectively for the feature race. 

“We’re in a very good place to fight for the teams’ championship,” Staněk said during the post-qualifying press conference. “We have quite a nice advantage already now. Scoring some points will help, but of course, I want to win, and also Forna, so the best would be P1 and P2 for us [in the feature race].”

Practice pacesetter Crawford was the fastest of the early runners, setting a time of 1:37.633 seven minutes into the session. Prema’s Sebastián Montoya beat that time three minutes later before Crawford reclaimed top spot with 19:08 on the clock, going 0.081s faster than his original time.

The DAMS driver, however, lost his second time for exceeding track limits at Turn 7, but he was usurped regardless by Joshua Dürksen on a 1:37.464 – the best effort on the first runs. The Paraguayan led Fornaroli and Montoya at the mid-session break ahead of. 

The field departed the pit lane for their final qualifying runs of the season with 12 minutes remaining. Arvid Lindblad, who was announced as a 2026 Racing Bulls F1 driver on Tuesday, usurped Dürksen’s time on his first flying lap after pitting, going two tenths quicker with a 1:37.247. 

Over the next minute and a half, Crawford, Montoya, Dino Beganovic and Victor Martins all set faster lap times than Lindblad’s, but it was Staněk who set the eventual pole time with a 1:36.836 with 4:50 remaining. Although Crawford improved by a tenth on his final effort, he could not beat the Czech driver, who secured his second F2 pole position after taking his first in Budapest in August. 

Fornaroli, who was announced as a new McLaren junior this week alongside Richard Verschoor, elected to make a set-up change during the mid-session lull. He then took his final laps out of sync with the rest of the field, leaving him with traffic to navigate through the final sector on his last effort. After setting personal bests in the first two sectors, he fell short in the last one and could not claim a spot on the front row for Sunday’s feature race. 

Staněk confirmed that this weekend would be his last in F2 after three seasons. While the 21-year-old told Feeder Series that he was ‘sad’ to be leaving F2, he said doing so was the right decision.

“The decision was quite easy,” Staněk said in the post-race press conference. “Four years in F2 is not very normal. Also, I wasn’t able to renew or sign a contract with Invicta for one more year which is clearly the best team, so it’s time to move forward for me. 

“I would be very happy to tell you what is coming next, but I don’t know. I didn’t sign anything for next year. We are still speaking about many opportunities or many options.” 

It looked as though Staněk might have lost his pole position hours after qualifying ended. The FIA technical delegate found that his plank was not declared in contravention of article 24.17 of the F2 sporting regulations and summoned Invicta team manager Geoff Spear to the stewards. After Spear proved that the originally nominated plank had not been used, the FIA judged the breach to have been an administrative error and handed Invicta a fine of €1,000. 

Beganovic was fourth, 0.188s behind Staněk, in his final race with Hitech before he switches to DAMS for 2026. Montoya was fifth and Goethe sixth ahead of Lusail feature race winner Victor Martins in seventh. Dürksen will be disappointed with eighth after such a strong start to the session, while Nikola Tsolov again outqualified his Campos Racing teammate Lindblad to finish the session ninth. 

The Red Bull junior, however, was handed a three-place grid penalty for both races for impeding Luke Browning at Turn 9 early in the session. As a result, Dürksen will start on the reverse-grid front row for the sprint race alongside Lindblad, who qualified 10th for his final junior single-seater race weekend. 

Four drivers have a mathematical chance of taking second in the championship, with Crawford, the current holder of that spot, in the driving seat. The three rivals who could surpass him – Alex Dunne, Verschoor and Browning – qualified 11th, 12th and 17th respectively.

As Fornaroli said of the teams’ title battle, “We don’t have to relax because races are unpredictable and everything can happen. I’m sure we’ll give everything in the races.”

All is still to play for in the sprint race at 16:15 local on Saturday and the feature race at 13:15 on Sunday. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency