Gabriele Minì delivered a clinical victory in Formula 2’s sprint race on Saturday at the Hungaroring, capitalising on a collision between points leader Nikola Tsolov and polesitter Sebastián Montoya to give his title hopes a critical boost. Feeder Series spoke to the three podium finishers about managing dirty air, tyre degradation and overtaking and also heard from Noel León and Joshua Dürksen, who battled at the end of the race.

By Michael McClure and August Bamford 

MP Motorsport’s Minì couldn’t snatch the lead from Montoya at the start and had to bide his time. The gap between the pair ebbed and flowed over the opening half of the race, with Minì closing in before backing off to apply pressure without overheating his own tyres.

A probing move around the outside on lap eight served as an early warning shot, but it took until lap 17 for the Prema Racing driver’s defence to crack. With his tyres fading, Montoya locked up defending into Turn 1, running just wide enough for Minì to slice underneath him and seize the lead. Once in clean air, Minì immediately pulled clear, building a comfortable buffer over the drivers behind to secure his second win of the season and pocket 11 crucial points on title rival Nikola Tsolov, having also won the bonus point for setting the fastest lap among the top 10.

“We tried to manage the tires on the first part of the race. That’s why it was really hard for me to get past Sebas on the first laps,” Minì explained to Feeder Series in the post-race press conference. “The degradation doesn’t come so early on, but the overheating did, so that helped me quite a lot. We were in a better position than Sebas and managed to overtake, but once you get clean air it’s a completely different story. I just started going quicker and probably sliding less on the tyre.

“It’s really important, especially in this track, to manage at the beginning, but then the position on the track or being in clean or dirty air makes a huge difference. So tomorrow we will see the bigger differences from it.”

Budapest F2 polesitter Montoya started well but lagged slightly on the second phase of the start, with Minì seeming to accelerate faster. But Montoya eventually recovered, pulling ahead on the downhill run to the braking zone as Campos Racing’s Tsolov barged his way past DAMS’ Dino Beganovic. Both Tsolov and Laurens van Hoepen went to the outside line of Turn 1 in hopes of gaining positions, but it proved too slippery for either to make up ground.

The shuffling into Turn 1 came as good news for Montoya, who stretched out a comfortable 1.5-second lead by the end of the opening lap. Minì then halved the gap by lap three after setting a 1:34.048, then the fastest lap of the race, but Montoya gradually drew it out again.

That was until lap seven, when Minì sliced the gap once more with a 1:33.896 – three and a half tenths faster than Montoya’s 1:34.237. The Italian closed on the Colombian with the aid of DRS into both Turns 1 and 2, pulling alongside entering the latter. A move, however, was premature.

The two Invicta Racing cars of Dürksen and Rafael Câmara were also on the move from seventh and ninth, but only the former ended up gaining positions, rising to sixth behind Trident’s Van Hoepen. Dürksen had a snap of oversteer under braking for Turn 2 and relinquished two places to the ART Grand Prix duo of Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Kush Maini. The Indian driver had Dürksen all over his mirrors for the next few laps but held firm.

The race settled into a rhythm from there, with no changes among the drivers in the points positions until the race’s halfway point. And then the race’s complexion quickly changed.

At the end of the 16th lap, Minì had closed to a few tenths behind Montoya and went to the outside as the pair started the 17th circuit. The move initially appeared to come to nothing – until Montoya locked up and ran deep into the corner, missing the apex and opening the door for the Alpine junior to complete an over-under manoeuvre on corner exit. Montoya tried to fight back around the outside of Turn 2 but couldn’t get close enough, his tyres now past their prime.

“It’s a lot of patience,” Beganovic said regarding the tyre saving strategies. “It’s a game that you have to play. If you’re quicker than the guy in front, you don’t have enough delta pace to overtake even at the beginning because everyone has the same amount of tyre and it will not be enough on this track. While on the end of the race, if you’ve done a good job, you’ll have a big enough delta pace. I think that’s what everybody is thinking about. For tomorrow it’s a very different story with the prime and option strategies, so I think it’ll be a very different race tomorrow.”

“The line is very thin here between overtake and tyre managing, which makes it very tricky,” Van Hoepen added. “You need a lot of overpace to be able to overtake on this track, so then as soon as you are trying to overtake, you ask a lot of tyres and then you start to slide. That’s everything you do that’s over the line and hurts you in the end, so you have to keep your head on in this track and be patient.”

Tsolov was the next to try to capitalise on Montoya’s evidently declining pace, making a late lunge into Turn 1 the following lap. That didn’t come off, so on lap 21 he tried again – and failed spectacularly. The Bulgarian outbraked himself and banged wheels with Montoya, who was knocked into the run-off area at Turn 1, his race over.

The incident meant that the 21-year-old failed to score from reverse-grid pole for the second race in succession after finishing ninth in Spa. Tsolov trundled around with suspension damage and retired in pit lane, by which point the virtual safety car had been deployed. The Red Bull junior received a 10-second post-race time penalty converted to a five-place grid penalty for the feature race.

“We are speaking all the time that it’s hard to overtake at this track. You try your best, both drivers try their best, to make it work, and obviously for a podium position you try very hard,” Beganovic said. “I can’t really say anything, who was in front at any stage, so I’d rather not comment on that, but I thank them both very much.”

Beganovic and Van Hoepen were elevated to second and third respectively after the incident, but neither had enough in the tank to reel in Minì by the end. The 21-year-old streaked clear in the final six laps to win by 3.787 seconds, his assured drive helping him close the championship gap to 16 points with Tsolov’s non-score. MP also climbed to second in the teams’ standings and cut Campos’ advantage to 56 points.

Câmara drove a lonely race to fourth after his opening-lap battles. Maini radioed to his team that he had better pace than Inthraphuvasak, and demonstrated it on the 19th lap when he soared past the Thai driver down the start-finish straight.

Dürksen finished seventh after intense battle with León on lap 25. The Mexican attempted an overtake around the outside of Turn 1 but opted to tuck in behind the Invicta driver to set up a move into Turn 2. That gave León the inside line, and he completed the move while pushing Dürksen to the edge of the circuit, the Invicta driver dipping a wheel in the grass.

León said it was ‘a good move’, and Feeder Series understands that the stewards took no further action after investigating it. Dürksen had a different outlook.

“With Noel, we were fighting hard,” the Paraguayan told Feeder Series post-race. “In T2, I was ahead in the entry to the middle of the corner, which means I have the right to the corner. Then he just did the switchback and, for me, basically, he just aimed directly to the outside, which leaves me with no space.

“He was just in front of me, very late on the exit, which, in theory, it’s my right to go up ahead on entry and exit. I feel he should’ve left me some space. If he would’ve gained the rights before, then, no problem, he can close that door, but as he just gained it super late, I think he should’ve given me that space.”

“It was a bit of a messy race, honestly,” Dürksen added. “We scored some points, but I think as well we had more potential to be a bit further in front. The start was good, but sadly I just couldn’t capitalise on it on T1 and T2. Then the race pace I felt at the beginning was quite alright. I was struggling a little on the middle to the end of the race, something that we’re still looking at.”

Dürksen may have been upset about the manoeuvre, but he would have the last laugh as León received a five-second penalty for a virtual safety car infringement. That meant the Campos driver dropped behind Martinius Stenshorne, who took the final point in eighth having fended off a pursuing John Bennett.

“It was quite a tricky race,” León told Feeder Series outside the Campos garage after the race. “We didn’t get a good start, so we lost a lot of positions there. Then [it was] just a train, so we tried to build a gap and see the car for tomorrow, which seems pretty good. At the end, with the penalty on the VSC, it was a shame because [it was] a mistake from our side. [The delta] was positive and then after T12 it went negative, so too fast a bit. I have a penalty of five seconds by being two tenths over, so it’s a shame.”

After being passed by Cian Shields for 21st on lap 15, Emerson Fittipaldi Jr was the only driver to attempt the alternate strategy. With no positions to lose, he pitted for softs at the end of lap 19 but still finished 24.636 seconds behind Dunne, whose weekend got no better after he qualified 17th on Friday.

Roman Bilinski set the fastest lap, a 1:30.989, on lap 24, but because he finished outside the top 10 in 18th, the bonus point went to Minì for his best effort, a 1:32.731, on lap 26.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency