Formula 2 enjoyed another action-packed North American round in Montréal last weekend. Laurens van Hoepen took pole on Friday before Noel León won the sprint race and Martinius Stenshorne took victory in the feature. Feeder Series analyses four things we learned from the weekend’s action. 

By Martin Lloyd

The weekend was another teeming with incidents and racing action, while the variable weather continuously threatened to shake up the action on F2’s second consecutive brand-new circuit. A Rodin 1-2 in practice led by Alex Dunne set the tone for their weekend, though they fell short in qualifying to Van Hoepen, who continued his strong vein of form to take Trident’s first pole in 616 days. León’s sprint win gave Campos their third victory in as many rounds before Stenshorne took his maiden win on Sunday. 

• Qualifying report and quotes: Van Hoepen takes maiden F2 pole in Montréal and Trident’s first since 2024
• Sprint race report and quotes: León gets first F2 race victory in incident-filled sprint race in Montréal
• Feature race report and quotes: Stenshorne heads Rodin 1-2 with first win on damp track in Montréal

1. Rodin finally fulfil their potential

Since it was announced that F3 graduate Martinius Stenshorne would partner Alex Dunne at Rodin Motorsport for the 2026 season, excitement and expectation surrounded the team. This was F2’s standout mid-season debutant at Trident from 2025 partnering with the highest-placed returning driver from the 2025 season.

Dunne has continued to show some of the best one-lap pace in the field, qualifying third, fourth and third again in the first three races, while Stenshorne has shown potential too. But race day mistakes, from both the drivers and the team, restricted them to just 16 points across the first two rounds, all scored in sprint races.

All of that changed, resoundingly, on Sunday in Montréal. The race was not straightforward. Stenshorne started as the higher-placed driver in third after Dunne’s three-place penalty for impeding relegated him to sixth. The pair remained in those positions at the start and were only promoted for the first time when early leader Laurens van Hoepen crashed out at the final corner. Both drivers pitted at the end of lap nine, taking the opportunity to limit their time loss during the safety car period of the race. Stenshorne remained the second-highest driver who had made a stop, while Dunne was dropped to a net ninth position after being held behind his teammate in the Rodin box. 

At the lap 13 restart, Stenshorne’s position improved further when he pounced on Nikola Tsolov’s indecision while the Bulgarian was struggling to pass Mari Boya, who had not yet stopped. Stenshorne passed the pair at Turn 2 to snatch the net lead, a position he would never relinquish. 

Over the ensuing laps, Dunne passed several drivers, including Boya and Cian Shields, to become the fourth-highest-placed driver who had stopped by lap 23. An overtake on Alpine stablemate Gabriele Minì, followed by Dino Beganovic’s mechanical retirement, meant that Dunne finished just behind his teammate when the race concluded under safety car conditions. 

After a string of incidents, not least the crash in Melbourne that took out both of their drivers from the top two positions, Rodin finally had their day in the sun in 2026. This would have been especially pleasing given that both drivers were involved in incidents during the sprint race, though Stenshorne still finished third on Saturday. The challenge now will be for Rodin to turn their clear pace into a consistent race-winning machine. If they can do that, the British team will be hard to stop. 

2. Minì’s encouraging form continues

Clearly, Rodin were the story of the day in Canada, but Minì’s personal achievement in finishing third behind Stenshorne and Dunne should not be underestimated. The Italian driver suffered a torrid 2025 as his previous team, perennial frontrunners Prema, endured their second season of struggle with the 2024 Dallara F2 car. Having moved to MP Motorsport over the winter, Minì looks to be revitalised. 

He followed up his impressive feature race win in Miami with another strong weekend in North America, also finishing second in the sprint race to join Stenshorne as one of just two F2 drivers to take a double podium this season. Both of his results this weekend were hard-fought, and the 21-year-old will be satisfied with third in the feature race given Rodin’s clear pace advantage. With Joshua Dürksen not scoring in either race, Minì is now the only driver in the championship to have taken points in all six races thus far. 

The 23-point weekend, coupled with poor weekends for Nikola Tsolov and Rafael Câmara, has given Minì a 21-point lead in the championship. While the season remains young, the win comes at an important time as the intense European leg of the calendar kicks into action at Monaco in two weeks’ time. His points haul has also helped his MP team into the lead of the teams’ championship, in which they currently have a one-point advantage over Campos on 68 points. 

3. AIX prove they can fight without Dürksen

Joshua Dürksen’s departure from AIX Racing for Invicta Racing, after two impressive seasons at the unfancied German-Emirati team, left big shoes to fill. The Paraguayan had scored all but 18 of AIX’s points from 2024 to 2025 and had almost single-handedly lifted them off of the foot of the teams’ championship table. So when the team announced that Cian Shields, who had failed to score a point in his first full F2 season last year, would be returning for 2026 alongside Emmo Fittipaldi Jr, a Eurocup-3 graduate making an ambitious step up, eyebrows were raised.

After two tough weekends to start the season, the team proved in both Montréal races that they could fight without their previous star driver. The weekend started positively with Fittipaldi qualifying 11th, 0.030 seconds outside the top 10, and Shields in 17th, an F2 career best. The Brazilian rose to ninth on the opening lap on Saturday and moved to eighth through a stop-and-go penalty for Nicolás Varrone. A collision between Dunne and Dürksen promoted him to seventh, while the 10-second penalty Dunne would receive for the incident moved Fittipaldi to sixth.

Tsolov’s 10-second penalty for causing a collision with Stenshorne meant that the Brazilian eventually finished fifth, scoring four crucial points for his team. Shields then took another fifth place on Sunday in similar circumstances, staying out of trouble while holding his own in the midfield as others fell away. 

The weekend’s results will be extremely welcome for AIX, who were the only team not to have scored prior to the Montréal round. They may not return to the wins and podiums of Dürksen’s time with the team, but this weekend showed that some good days will still be possible. 

4. A rollercoaster weekend for Campos Racing

Campos’ emotions would have been very mixed throughout the Montréal weekend. Noel León took his second podium of the season and first career F2 victory with an impressive sprint race win, but the team only scored one point on Sunday and lost the teams’ championship lead to MP. Meanwhile, expected challengers Rodin are now only three points behind them after their near-perfect Sunday display. 

The weekend was going swimmingly until lap 10 of the sprint. Both drivers had qualified in the top 10, and León was in second place and Tsolov was fighting Stenshorne for sixth. But the Bulgarian misjudged his braking point as his rival looked to make a move on John Bennett for fifth. Contact with Stenshorne’s right-rear tyre sent the Norwegian spearing into Bennett, who retired, with Tsolov earning a 10-second penalty for the contact that dropped him from fifth to 14th. Teammate León, meanwhile, passed Minì for the lead at the final chicane on lap 18 to secure the win, while Dunne – who had been running behind Tsolov at the time of the incident – crossed the line second. 

On Sunday, Tsolov was handed another 10-second time penalty, costing him any chance of points as the race finished with the field closed up behind the safety car. He was adjudged to have left the track and gained an advantage while battling Oliver Goethe earlier in the race, relegating him from fourth to 12th. The messy weekend cost Tsolov as many as 17 points, which would have kept him right on Minì’s heels in the championship after the weekend.

The only silver lining for Campos was that this penalty promoted León to a points-paying position in 10th, his fifth scoring result in sixth races. So despite the win and the strong weekend overall for the Mexican, Campos will certainly feel that they left points on the table in Canada. 

Results and standings after round 1 at Albert Park

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Laurens van Hoepen, 1:21.422	Rafael Câmara, +0.267s	Alex Dunne, +0.287s
Sprint race (28 laps)	Noel León, 43:36.869	Gabriele Minì, +3.726s	Martinius Stenshorne, +5.540s
Feature race (37 laps)	Martinius Stenshorne, 1:03:08.023	Alex Dunne, +1.077	Gabriele Minì, +1.313s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Gabriele Minì, 57	MP Motorsport, 69
P2	Rafael Câmara, 36	Campos Racing, 68
P3	Nikola Tsolov, 35	Rodin Motorsport, 65
P4	Martinius Stenshorne, 35	Invicta Racing, 52
P5	Noel León, 33	Hitech, 38
P6	Laurens van Hoepen, 33	Trident, 33
P7	Alex Dunne, 30	ART Grand Prix, 27
P8	Dino Beganovic, 24	DAMS, 26
P9	Ritomo Miyata, 22	Prema Racing, 26
P10	Joshua Dürksen, 16	Van Amersfoort Racing, 14

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency