Invicta Racing’s Joshua Dürksen won the Formula 2 sprint race at Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit on Saturday from second place on the grid, beating Noel Léon by 2.139 seconds. The Campos Racing driver took his maiden F2 podium in his first race, while Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne was a further 3.617s back. 

By Martin Lloyd 

On a day when there were impressive stories throughout the top 10, Dürksen was imperious at the front. Starting alongside reverse-grid polesitter Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak in a race delayed 20 minutes because of an accident in the F3 sprint race, the Paraguayan had a difficult launch and lost a position to Oliver Goethe at Turn 1. But he quickly re-passed the German driver around the outside of Turn 9 before setting off in pursuit of Inthraphuvasak.

On lap two, Dürksen replicated his Turn 9 move and shot past Inthraphuvasak to take the lead – this time with DRS assistance. From that point onwards, he remained in first place for the remainder of the race, taking his second consecutive sprint race win in Melbourne and picking up right where he left off in 2025, when he won the season finale in his last outing with AIX Racing.

His previous four F2 wins in 2024 and 2025 all came with AIX, who are not one of F2’s traditional frontrunners. Does he feel more expectation to win while driving for the reigning champions in comparison with AIX?

“Not necessarily,” Dürksen answered in the post-race press conference. “For sure with Invicta you are expected to win – or at least have more consistent results – and be at the front all the time, which is also a target for myself because I know that to be a championship contender, what matters is to score points every single race or weekend. The guy that is the most consistent is, at the end, the guy that wins. 

“I think Invicta gives me this car which allows me to be very consistent and on a good pace. With AIX, it was always a bit more up and down. Of course, when a victory was coming, we were extremely happy. With Invicta, people expect it to come, so it’s nothing new or something unexpected.”

Behind Dürksen, the race was not quite so simple. Two corners after being overtaken for second, Goethe spun on the inside of Turn 11 as Kush Maini, Inthraphuvasak’s ART Grand Prix teammate, passed him. And after Dürksen passed Inthraphuvasak, Maini came under pressure  from both Rafael Câmara and Nikola Tsolov at Turn 11. The pair both made moves on the Indian driver and Câmara briefly moved into third on the inside line before Maini took the place back at the next corner with a better exit. Léon took advantage of the chaos to pass Tsolov at Turn 11 and Câmara at Turn 13.

The Mexican driver, one of six drivers taking part in an F2 race for the first time, pulled ahead as teammate Tsolov lost positions. The Bulgarian was fighting hard for sixth place at Turn 2 with Martinius Stenshorne, who had little option but to leave the track to avoid a collision, such was the aggression of Tsolov’s side-by-side defence. The Norwegian gained the position, while Dunne took advantage of Tsolov’s lost momentum from that moment and moved into seventh. Stenshorne later received a five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage.

León passed Maini for third on lap four, and a lap later, Câmara made a second attempt to pass the Indian driver at Turn 11. This one proved much more successful, moving the reigning F3 champion into fourth place. 

Meanwhile, Gabriele Minì in 11th was beginning to raise eyebrows. The Italian – last year’s fastest qualifier – had shown pace once again when he topped practice on Friday by 0.408 seconds, but he started at the back of the grid after experiencing a technical issue in qualifying. 

He had overtaken half the field in five laps, and by lap 12, he had made his way up to sixth place with moves on Dunne, Ritomo Miyata and Maini among others. A podium finish from the back of the grid began to seem a realistic possibility when the safety car was called out on track on lap 14 for Mari Boya’s crashed car at Turn 6. The Spaniard had been in 14th place, following his teammate Sebastián Montoya, but suffered a snap of oversteer at Turn 6 and found the barriers.

Seven of the lower-order runners stopped for new supersoft tyres at this point, led by Colton Herta, who pitted from 13th. This alternate strategy, however, did not catapult those drivers into the points-paying positions as it has at other sprint races, including at Barcelona last year. 

At the restart at the end of lap 18, Inthraphuvasak was immediately under pressure from Léon, having been caught napping by Dürksen’s quick restart. While the Thai driver held off an initial wave of pressure from Léon, he was outfoxed by an audacious dummy into Turn 11 on lap 20 that moved him down to third place. Léon had signalled that he would move to the outside before switching to the inside and claiming the position, one he held until the flag.

“Tas was really fast,” Léon told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “When I wanted to catch him before, I was not able. We were pretty similar in pace, and at the restart, he made a mistake. He locked up at T13, T14, something like that, so I knew he was struggling with tyres. I was feeling pretty strong, so I knew I had a shot. And after that, [I knew] it would be very difficult to overtake. So I take it and I send it – it results well. This time it was pretty close to failure, but luckily it happened well!”

The key focus for the remainder of the race was whether Inthraphuvasak would hold on to third place. Câmara pressured him immediately after Léon’s move, but Inthraphuvasak’s aggressive defence seemed to unsettle the Brazilian, who proceeded to drop eight places over the next lap. The first driver to pass Câmara was the penalty-affected Stenshorne, who then got close enough to challenge Inthraphuvasak on lap 22.

Puzzlingly, Inthraphuvasak decided to defend aggressively from Stenshorne but had to concede third place on the road at Turn 1. The ART driver’s car squirmed on exit from Turn 2 as Dunne rapidly closed, and his running wide at Turn 3 opened the door for the Irishman to come through into fourth place and a net podium position. Inthraphuvasak was forced to settle for fourth, behind Dürksen, Léon and Dunne.

Hitech’s Ritomo Miyata quietly drove an impressive race, taking advantage of others’ mistakes to move up from 13th on the grid to fifth. Minì was sixth, having made up 16 places from the back of the grid even while he lost positions to Dunne and Miyata in the last three laps and couldn’t make a final charge for the podium. Trident’s Laurens van Hoepen was seventh, scoring two points to equal his team’s entire tally from 2025, while DAMS’ Roman Bilinski finished eighth on his debut to score one point.

Stenshorne’s penalty relegated him to 10th, though he still picked up a point for setting the fastest lap on the race’s 23rd and final tour. Câmara could only finish 11th after his miserable 21st lap. 

The highest-finishing driver to have pitted was Rafael Villagómez in 13th. Herta finished 16th on his F2 debut, one position ahead of early frontrunner Tsolov, who slid down the field following a series of mistakes in the race’s middle portion. The fast-starting Goethe could only manage 18th after his first-lap spin.

Feature race polesitter Dino Beganovic was forced to pit on lap three, finishing 20th after stopping again under the safety car. Endurance racing convert Nicolás Varrone was another first-lap spinner, and he finished 21st and last.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency