Rafael Câmara bounced back from a disappointing feature race last weekend in Monaco to score his first Formula 2 win at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The Invicta Racing driver carried out an unconventional race-winning strategy to finish ahead of Campos Racing’s Nikola Tsolov and Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne. Feeder Series spoke to the top three afterwards about their races and strategies.

By Feeder Series

Câmara went an impressive 22 laps on his soft tyres, leaving him with a sizeable grip advantage over his competitors as he clawed his way back to the front on hard tyres. And once he got there, he never looked back, crossing the line nearly 10 seconds in front to take his first win in the championship. 

“It was very nice to get the first win,” Câmara told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “[For a long] time it was close and we were never really able to close it. But obviously very happy with that and finally able to achieve that – it feels very good.

“In terms of confidence, I think it doesn’t really change that much. I think there were a lot of positives in the other race weekends, and we came here also with a lot of confidence and we showed that we had good pace the whole weekend, so [the key going forward is] focusing on the job and keep growing through the season.”

Though he started and ended the race first, Câmara wasn’t always so assured of victory. The reigning F3 champion got away from pole poorly and lost the lead to Alex Dunne before the first turn. Behind, Rafael Villagómez, Gabriele Minì and Nikola Tsolov went three-wide into Turn 1, with Minì losing out to the two drivers either side of him. Tsolov, on the hard tyres, was then repassed by the MP Motorsport driver around the outside of Turn 3 before Nico Varrone made his way past the Campos driver at Turn 5. 

The safety car was brought out before the end of the first tour to recover the stricken Oliver Goethe, who had already stalled on the formation lap before coming to a halt at pit exit shortly after the race began.

Dunne maintained a comfortable gap over Câmara as the race went back to green on lap four. The rest of the pack remained as they were until Colton Herta moved past Tsolov for sixth place down the inside of Turn 13 later that lap. As the leading runner on the hard tyres, Tsolov struggled to get the temperature into his Pirellis and fell behind Dino Beganovic and Martinius Stenshorne by the end of lap five. 

As Câmara exerted pressure on race leader Dunne, Minì made the move into the podium places, overtaking Villagómez at the first turn on lap 10. The Van Amersfoort Racing driver was then the first of the frontrunners to make his mandatory stop on lap 12. 

The two leaders began lap 13 running nose to tail, with Dunne weaving down the straight in an attempt to keep Câmara, who had a pace advantage, behind. Dunne dived into the pits from the lead at the end of the lap, and a smooth stop brought him out into a gap behind all those yet to stop. Minì followed him in the next time around, while Câmara stayed out, setting personal best sectors in clear air. 

While Dunne made his way up the order and past the hard-tyre runners, Câmara extended his soft-tyre stint out front, the gap between them hovering around the projected pit stop time. On lap 22, the Brazilian finally made the switch onto the hard tyres. A slight delay on the front left meant he reemerged with a seven-second gap to net leader Dunne.

The Irishman, in his battling to get ahead of the hard-tyre runners, had been caught by Minì, and the two drivers were separated by mere car lengths as they attempted to overtake Joshua Dürksen on lap 23. Dunne found himself boxed in behind the Invicta, and Minì swept around the outside of the two of them at the Turn 10 hairpin – but free from Dürksen himself, the Rodin driver returned the favour by going around the outside of his fellow Alpine Academy driver at Turn 12. 

Câmara, with tyres that were nearly 10 laps fresher than those of his rivals, made light work of cutting through the field. He disposed of Beganovic and Villagómez on laps 25 and 26 respectively before catching up to Minì and overtaking him into the first corner on lap 28. Dunne was only two seconds up the road by this point, and Câmara closed in rapidly. By lap 30 he was lining up the move on the front straight, and there was nothing Dunne could do to prevent the Ferrari junior from taking the lead of the race. 

Further behind, Tsolov had come into the pits for softs on lap 23 and slotted into ninth in the order. Over the remaining 14 laps of the race, he rocketed up the field in pursuit of a podium, moving from ninth at the start of lap 25 to fourth on lap 30 with a move on Beganovic at Turn 1. He came across championship rival Minì on lap 33 and breezed his way past the Italian with superior grip exiting Turn 10.

Two laps later he was on the back of Dunne, and the pair went wheel to wheel through Turns 3 and 4 before Tsolov turned the outside line into the inside line for Turn 5. With that overtake, he took second place in the race – and the provisional championship lead.

But there was no catching Câmara, who was eight seconds in front at the time. The Invicta driver cruised to the line with a 9.851-second advantage over Tsolov as Dunne held on to finish third ahead of Minì. Câmara’s winning margin was the biggest in F2 since Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the 2024 Hungaroring feature race by 12.528s – a statistic that mirrors Kush Maini’s 7.269s advantage yesterday, the largest in a sprint race since his 2024 Hungaroring sprint race victory.

Strategy was a key factor in the feature race, and the top three drivers explained to Feeder Series that they had a tough decision to make on Sunday morning as to which tyres to start on.

“It was pretty clear going [with] the softs, especially starting from P1. You don’t want to lose track position. There’s always an advantage going in clean air,” Câmara said. “I can’t say ‘no’ today that it was not a good strategy because we won. But both strategies [were] very close. Maybe if you started a bit [further] behind… but starting from P1 it gives a bit more flexibility.”

Tsolov, meanwhile, woke up with a feeling that the hard tyres were the way to go.

“[Campos] trust me a lot with my choices, which I’m really happy about. This year, we’ve been going always in the direction that I want. They follow it, and it’s never been wrong,” he said. “We analysed it and, overall, we saw that it was 50/50. It wasn’t too clear, so why not try do the opposite of the guys ahead and maybe get an advantage? Which, obviously, we did.”

“I had a very long conversation with the whole team and my engineer about what tyres we should start on,” Dunne said. “Last year, we started on the hards, and in the end it worked out pretty well. I think this year, I was trying to push them on to start on the hards, but I think at the same time, we were trying to weigh up the risk versus reward. But I guess the way we weighed it up in the end was incorrect.

“I think, ultimately, when you look at the race as a whole and if you want to just have a quick race time and avoid all the outside factors, starting on the hards is definitely faster. If you get a safety car halfway through that stint and everyone else gets a free pit stop, then you’re very unlucky. Ultimately in the end it worked out, but looking back, maybe if we started on the hards, we might have got unlucky and there was a safety car. I think we chose the safer option and in the end we still came away with a podium, so I don’t think we can be too disappointed.”

Laurens van Hoepen, who ran an alternate strategy similar to Tsolov, carved his way through the field from a starting position of 13th to finish fifth in the feature race. Beganovic, who started 12th, slid back to sixth at the flag after running as high as fourth on the conventional strategy. He was followed by John Bennett, who set the fastest lap on lap 26 en route to a career-best seventh-place finish from 18th on the grid. Noel León was eighth, with yesterday’s race winner Kush Maini and Roman Bilinski rounding out the points. 

After five rounds of the championship, Tsolov now sits at the top of the standings once more on 86 points, three ahead of Minì. Câmara moves back up to third on 69 points, followed by Dunne on 64 points. As in F3, Campos lead the teams’ standings, with their 140-point haul putting them 28 ahead of Rodin, 45 ahead of MP and 50 ahead of Invicta heading to round six in Spielberg in two weeks’ time.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency