Ritomo Miyata became the first-ever Formula 2 race winner in Madrid as he took his own maiden victory in the championship. The Hitech driver also secured his team’s first podium of the season, finishing 2.678 seconds ahead of AIX Racing’s Emerson Fittipaldi Jr and Trident’s Laurens van Hoepen. Feeder Series heard the thoughts of the top three on the contest in the post-race press conference.

By Cliona Sheerin

Miyata became the seventh new race winner of the season as he led every lap around the Madring following a move for the lead into the first corner.

“I really focused on [the] the start and then just we managed the race,” Miyata said in the post-race press conference. “Really happy. Finally we won the race. We really struggled during the season. Finally we get the win, and it’s a really good feeling.”

Miyata got the jump on Fittipaldi as the lights went out, taking the inside line and the lead of the race into the first turn. There was trouble further back with Sebastián Montoya spinning John Bennett around at the first corner, but it was an incident between Kush Maini and Nico Varrone that brought out the safety car before the close of the opening lap. The ART Grand Prix driver went up the inside of Turn 7, attempting a move that wasn’t really there for the taking, and slammed into the side of Varrone, sending the Van Amersfoort Racing driver backwards into the outside wall. 

Elsewhere in the top 10, the two DAMS drivers dropped positions on the opening lap, with Bilinski suffering the most and falling six positions from fifth down to 11th, just ahead of teammate and tomorrow’s polesitter Dino Beganovic in 12th. Gabriele Minì moved up from a starting position of 13th on soft tyres to 10th.

Racing resumed heading on to lap five, with Miyata getting back up to speed just before the final corner and maintaining his lead. The rest of the field followed in formation, with Rafael Câmara under the most pressure in his battle for seventh with Alex Dunne. The Brazilian skipped over the chicane at Turn 5 and, as a result, faced a post-race investigation for failing to follow the race director’s instructions in regard to his rejoin.

Van Hoepen, the highest-placed runner on the soft tyres, used the grippier rubber and DRS to his advantage to stay within the wheeltracks of Noel León ahead after the restart. On lap nine, the Dutchman finally made the move, threading the needle up the inside at Turn 5. León took to the runoff and rejoined, nabbing the position back into Turn 7.

The order stayed as such until lap 11, when León thought best to let Van Hoepen back through into third to avoid risking a penalty. The Trident driver then set about cutting the gap to Fittipaldi in front, which stood at 3.3s heading on to lap 12.

Meanwhile, León’s struggles continued, with his Campos teammate Nikola Tsolov getting more and more frustrated behind as he attempted to find a way through. Tsolov went over the chicane at Turn 5 on lap 13 and then again on lap 14, this time getting ahead of his teammate before relinquishing the position once more. All this fighting helped Martinius Stenshorne and Câmara close up, the quartet forming a DRS train with León at the helm. 

But that quartet became a trio later in the lap as Tsolov lost the car and drive after hitting the inside wall at Turn 20 and going around. The safety car was back out on the following tour to recover the stricken car of the championship leader, who would score no points in the contest. Miyata’s 2.2s lead was slashed, with Van Hoepen in the prime seat on the soft tyres in third.

The restart came at the end of lap 17 with six laps of the contest remaining. Miyata copied and pasted his approach from the first restart, catching out Fittipaldi behind once more, with the AIX driver having Van Hoepen for company as the field went back to racing speed. By the following lap, Miyata had pulled out of DRS range before it was even enabled as he set a fastest lap, a 1:49.209.

Van Hoepen continued to look for a move on Fittipaldi for second, but there was no way through. Miyata extended his lead to 2.678s across the line to take his maiden victory in the championship and Hitech’s first since their 1-2 in the sprint race around Baku last season.

It was a performance that had been coming from the team. Over the summer break, Miyata explained that Hitech made improvements in seeking to get back to the early-season form that saw Miyata take three points finishes in the opening two rounds.

“This year I was expecting much more better, but through the season we [knew] we’d struggle [with the] short-track performance especially,” Miyata said. “And then we tried to analyse during the summer break and finally be back to the strong performance. That’s why we won today. And also qualifying, since Monza, [we’re] back to our performance.”

Fittipaldi’s second place was his maiden podium and just his third points finish of the season. It was also a welcome return to the podium for the embattled AIX, who last appeared on the F2 rostrum in Joshua Dürksen’s victory in the Abu Dhabi feature race to end last season. 

“It feels great to be on the podium in Formula 2 in my rookie season. And doing it with AIX is incredible,” Fittipaldi said. “The help they’ve given me this season and all the development we’ve been going through together to get to this podium was a lot of hard work. A lot of defeats and lot of troubles, but that’s part of the sport. It’s always very good to step on a podium after all this hard work that you put in.”

The Brazilian held off the fast-charging soft-shod Van Hoepen in the latter stages, as a lack of overtaking opportunities and tyre degradation prevented the Trident driver from making the move. 

“It’s hard to follow on this track because the overtaking opportunities are very little and you just really have to prepare your pass very well,” Van Hoepen said. “So I was trying to push in the right places, but my tyres were also fading a little bit, so it started to get more tough and more tough. I was really hoping that [Fittipaldi] makes mistakes somewhere and I got close a couple of times, but it just wasn’t enough.”

León held on for fourth ahead of Stenhorne, who crossed the line with damage after losing his left-side front wing endplate earlier in the race. Câmara came home sixth, with the accompanying three points allowing him to close Tsolov’s lead in the championship to eight points. 

Dunne was seventh, with Spaniard Mari Boya rounding out the points in eighth. Minì ended the day ninth with Beganovic finishing where he started in tenth.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency