Rafael Câmara took his second feature race win of the year in the Formula 2 feature race at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. He completed a double win at Spa for Invicta Racing, finishing ahead of ART Grand Prix’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Campos Racing’s Nikola Tsolov after track limits penalties were applied. Feeder Series spoke to the podium finishers in the post-race press conference.

By Cliona Sheerin

On paper, it was a perfect race for Câmara as he started from pole and took the fastest lap of the race on his way to victory. The on-track action, however, told a completely different story. The Brazilian had to contend with multiple interruptions, including a red flag for a mid-race accident, and slice through the alternate-strategy runners to finish where he started the race. 

“The main challenge was after the red flag,” Câmara told Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “Behind the train of people with used tyres and struggling a bit with that pace, [it] was just about getting to overtake them as fast as possible and get clean air. [I] was a bit thinking of that before the start, but once we started, the car was feeling good, the moves also were always in the right place, so we managed to execute well – what I think was the key of the race.” 

Câmara’s poor getaway off the line was immediately exploited by Inthraphuvasak, who led the field into La Source from second on the grid. Tsolov behind him also moved up one position into third, while Alex Dunne was demoted to fourth but managed to prevent himself from dropping further down the order by keeping the first of the alternate strategy runners in Joshua Dürksen behind.

Further back, Dino Beganovic never even got off the line, while DAMS’ terrible start was compounded by a collision between their other driver Roman Bilinski and Gabriele Minì. The Alpine Academy driver locked up on the inside of La Source and spun Bilinski around, causing a concertina effect behind. Sebastián Montoya hit Minì and received front wing damage, which forced him to pit, while Oliver Goethe went no further than the base of the hill after being tagged from behind by Ritomo Miyata. Minì and Bilinski continued after the incident, with the former receiving a five-second time penalty for causing the collision. 

The safety car was deployed at the end of the first lap for marshals to clear Goethe’s car before the race got back underway at the end of the following tour. Race leader Inthraphuvasak caught the field out by going early on the restart, meaning he wasn’t under pressure going into La Source on the third lap. 

One driver who was looking in his mirrors heading into Turn 1 was polesitter Câmara. Tsolov was right on his tail heading across the start-finish straight and moved to the outside to try to complete the move around La Source. The two banged wheels, and the Bulgarian was run out of road on the exit of the corner, taking a trip to the gravel. When he rejoined, Dunne and Dürksen pounced on him, demoting him to fifth in the order. 

On lap five, both Invicta cars completed synchronised passes on the drivers in front on the Kemmel Straight, with Dürksen moving into third ahead of Dunne and Câmara regaining the lead from Inthraphuvasak. 

By that time, the drivers had reached the crossover point between tyre compounds. Dürksen had set the fastest lap on the medium tyres on lap four, and he was soon ahead of second-placed Inthraphuvasak and his teammate Câmara as the supersoft runners were forced to hold on to their rapidly degrading tyres until the mandatory pit stop window opened at the end of lap six. 

Câmara, Inthraphuvasak, Dunne, Laurens van Hoepen and Tsolov all piled into the pits to switch to the mediums, and they emerged in that same order. Dunne was right behind Inthraphuvasak as they did so, however, and the Rodin Motorsport driver swept around the outside of the ART at Les Combes to move into a net second position. 

Out front, Dürksen led the way from Varrone, who made up four places on the opening lap and five more in the next five laps. The Argentine rookie was catching Dürksen ahead, setting the fastest lap of the race on lap seven as he did so. But on lap nine, that charge – and the race itself – was brought to a halt.

Following his pit stop at the end of lap six, Van Hoepen was running 15th in the order, just ahead of Tsolov. Two laps later he took to the kerb on the exit of Malmedy, which launched him across the track and into the tyre barrier on the right-hand side of the track. The impact with the wall sent the Trident back across the track, the car scattering debris as it spun before coming to a stop with its underside in flames. Van Hoepen emerged unscathed, but his car was heavily damaged after the accident. The red flag was thrown to allow the marshals to clear the debris and fluid that had emanated from his Trident. 

Just before the race was paused, last-place starter Noel León came into the pits a second time, having already switched from the supersofts to the mediums. However, that was before the pit stop window opened, so the Campos driver completed his mandatory stop by switching to another set of mediums.

After a delay of more than 20 minutes, the race got back underway with 25 minutes left on the clock. Dürksen led the field to green at the end of lap 10, getting a decent jump on the drivers behind and maintaining the lead 

León moved up to eighth with a move on Cian Shields at the end of lap 11, while Câmara and Dunne followed him through at Les Combes on the following tour. Câmara then had a run on León into the Bus Stop chicane at the end of the lap, but the Campos driver held on until La Source, where the Brazilian placed his car on the outside and got a better exit to secure the net lead by the time the pair reached Eau Rouge. Câmara then expertly manoeuvred past Emerson Fittipaldi Jr and Bilinski down the Kemmel Straight, with Dunne also making moves on first León and then Fittipaldi through Les Combes. The AIX driver ran out of road on the exit of the corner – and went into a spin that left him beached in the gravel.

The ensuing safety car triggered pit stops for the remainder of the medium tyre runners, clearing the way for Câmara to retake the lead of the race on the road. He led the field on the restart at the end of lap 14, with the frontrunners remaining as they were while the supersoft runners attempted to claw back the positions they lost. 

Track limits soon put a spanner in the works in the fight for the podium places. First León was hit with five seconds to be added to his race time, before things went from bad to worse for Dunne on lap 17. After dropping out of DRS range to Câmara in front, he too received a five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits on more than three occasions. The two now had to push to maintain their podium positions. 

Out front, however, not even some drops of rain in the final laps could stop Câmara from taking Invicta’s fourth win in a row at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and his second of the season.

“This one was not an easy race,” Câmara said, “but after the red flag, [tyre management] wasn’t really a problem. I did some laps also on the medium, so … after the restart, I felt like the tyres were in the window and we were able to push straight away.”

With Dunne’s penalty demoting him from second to fourth, Inthraphuvasak finished where he started in second to become the series’ first Thai podium finisher since Alex Albon, who took his eighth and final F2 podium at Sochi in September 2018. León crossed the line fourth but also carried a penalty, meaning that championship leader Tsolov completed the rostrum in third, his own eighth podium of the season.

Cooler temperatures on Sunday morning – 14ºC in the air and 24ºC on track – added an extra dimension to tyre management in the feature race, which was already expected to be difficult given the short lifespan of the supersoft tyres. 

“The temperatures were very different to yesterday,” Inthraphuvasak told Feeder Series after the race. “It was very cold this morning, so during the warm-up laps it was quite hard to bring the temp into the tyres. After the red flag, we also got just an outlap before the start of the race, so [I was] just trying to manage the tyres as best as I could. Deg today was also definitely a big factor, especially on the supersofts. We all expected it to deg a lot, but I was really, really struggling on the first stint, just tried to manage as best as I could. I think we did a pretty good job.”

“We thought it was going to be a little bit harder than what it was,” Tsolov added. “The only times I felt competitive really was on all the restarts and all the first laps. The way we set up the car, the tyres were switched on immediately. The only thing I was struggling a bit was the brakes. Actually the red flag helped us to understand that one of the brakes was fully switched off before that so [it] probably was beneficial. There [were] a few things that went wrong, but we still maximised it.”

Inthraphuvasak is under investigation for an alleged unsafe release into the path of Dunne during the pit stop cycle, but the stewards decided not to take any further action after determining that safety protocols and regulations had not been breached.

Behind Dunne, Minì recovered to fifth to limit the championship damage after starting 14th and being involved in the opening-lap incident. Rafael Villagómez quietly rose to sixth after starting 19th. Despite receiving a five-second penalty, Colton Herta had enough of a buffer to maintain his seventh-place finish, his first result in the points after two non-scoring rounds.

Teammate Miyata behind took eighth, while Boya notched his third points finish of the season in ninth as the highest-placed driver on the alternate strategy. Martinius Stenshorne was the last of the points finishers in 10th. Varrone and Dürksen – who headed the group of alternate-strategy runners for much of the race – finished the race outside of the points in 13th and 14th respectively.

León did cross the line seventh having made up 15 places from where he started, but he was disqualified post-race. A team guest declared as non-operational personnel was deemed to have breached championship regulations by wearing a headset that was not for “listen only” purposes during the red flag period. The guest only had involvement with León’s car, which led to the Mexican’s disqualification, a fine of €20,000 to be paid by Campos, and the suspended withdrawal of 25 championship points from the team subject to no further breaches of the regulation in question.

In the drivers’ championship, Tsolov extended his lead to 27 points over Minì in second with his tally at 161 points. Câmara’s win helped him close the gap to the top two, and he now sits on 125 points, nine behind second place. Dunne remains fourth, 17 points further back from Câmara, while León rounds out the top five on 73 points.

Tsolov’s Campos team continued to edge further away from their rivals in the teams’ standings with a 70-point gap now to Rodin Motorsport, who reclaimed second from MP Motorsport by a slim three-point margin. The Dutch team fell to third after picking up just 11 points across the weekend at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, with Invicta likewise only two points behind in fourth.

Editor’s note, 19 July 2026, 16:40 CEST: This article was updated after publication to reflect the outcome of an investigation into an alleged unsafe release for Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak as well as the disqualification of Noel León for a breach of the series’ non-operational personnel rules.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency