DAMS’ Dino Beganovic took his first Formula 2 victory of the season with a lights-to-flag win at the Madring, finishing more than seven seconds ahead of Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne. Feeder Series heard from the pair in the post-race press conference.

By Cliona Sheerin

Polesitter Beganovic made the most of the timing of the race’s two safety car periods, but it was his huge pace advantage that ultimately secured him the victory today. It marked the second triumph of his F2 career and DAMS’ first since Jak Crawford’s Baku feature race victory last season, which was also won from pole. 

“The team did a good job, all week actually,” Beganovic said in the post-race press conference. “Coming from the simulator, testing some stuff and going in a direction that they haven’t been used to before but obviously it worked this weekend, and hopefully we can carry it on for Baku. From FP I felt very good in the car, confident, and that’s all you need at this track.”

Beganovic protected his lead as the lights went out with a good getaway to reach the first corner at the head of the field. Dunne and Rafael Câmara slotted in behind, followed by Martinius Stenshorne and highest-placed hard tyre runner Nikola Tsolov in fifth, with Noel León passing Laurens van Hoepen for seventh into the first corner.

Yellow flags flew on the second lap after Kush Maini found the wall on the exit of Turn 18 following contact with Cian Shields. The safety car came out on the next tour to allow the marshals to recover the ART Grand Prix driver, but it was too soon for the soft-tyre runners to get an effectively free mandatory pit stop and switch to the harder compound. 

The field continued circulating the 5.414-kilometre circuit behind race leader Beganovic, who was favouring a longer soft stint over the radio compared with Dunne’s plan to pit once the window opened, as long as the race remained under safety car conditions. Campos and Tsolov, meanwhile, were exploring their options on the prime tyre, with an early switch to the softs on the cards. 

However, all the discussion over the radio came to naught, as the end of the safety car coincided with the opening of the pit window. The only taker for a pit stop within the top 10 was Van Hoepen, who came in from eighth. 

On the restart, Beganovic re-established his authority, with Dunne close behind and a small gap back to Câmara in third. The DAMS driver had broken DRS shortly after the restart, but the Irishman got back into that one-second window quickly, the beginnings of a train starting to form behind the race leader.

As the group of stoppers towards the rear of the field started setting lap times seconds quicker than those of the race leaders, León made his stop at the end of lap 11. A slow stop for the Campos driver did not help his troubles, and he emerged behind the first of the drivers to have already stopped – Mari Boya – and under pressure from the Trident pair of Van Hoepen and John Bennett. 

Câmara came in next time around, originally rejoining ahead of Boya but being overtaken by the Spaniard later in the lap at Turn 13 on cold tyres. Tsolov pitted for softs at the end of lap 14, and he too was passed by the Prema Racing driver as he brought his tyres up to temperature. Stenshorne pitted on the same lap as Tsolov, yet he managed to get out ahead and stay ahead of Boya, taking over the lead of the pack of drivers who had made their pit stops. 

Out front, Beganovic and Dunne continued at a steady pace on the softs, going several tenths of a second quicker than Stenshorne on fresh tyres. 

Oliver Goethe came in at the end of lap 16, and his pit stop caused chaos among the pit stoppers. The MP driver was ahead of Boya on cold tyres, and Tsolov used their exchange to attempt a move around the Prema at Turn 5. But he skipped over the run-off and upon rejoining conceded the unlawfully gained places to Boya and Goethe. Câmara saw an opportunity to get through on his championship rival and took it, barging wheels with the Campos as he got up the inside at Turn 8 before setting about getting around Goethe in front. 

But rather than wait for a natural opportunity, Câmara forced the issue on Goethe at Turn 2 on lap 18, storming up the inside with too much pace and effectively using the MP as his braking point. The two made contact, with Goethe coming off worse and finding the wall on the exit of the corner. Câmara was handed a 10-second time penalty for causing the collision.

That incident brought out the second safety car of the race, a perfect opportunity for leaders Beganovic and Dunne to make a free pit stop. The pair came in on lap 19 and emerged in the same positions they held before the intervention, while sprint race winner Miyata sat third after pitting for the hard tyres on the same lap as the top two. Emerson Fittipaldi Jr, Joshua Dürksen and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak also benefitted from the timing of the safety car to earn cheap pit stops, with Stenshorne in seventh the first of those who pitted earlier on.

Bennett also came a cropper as the safety car was called, finding the wall at Turn 11 and retiring from the race.

The race got back underway on lap 22, with Beganovic once again holding on to the lead he had since the lights went out. The top two drivers exchanged fastest laps of the race as the contest went to time, with Dunne setting the fastest of them all on lap 29, a 1:46.257. Beganovic’s gap to Dunne, however, never dipped below the crucial one-second margin needed to grant the Rodin driver DRS, and soon the race leader found another gear, stretching his lead to 7.320s across the line.

Extending the first stint on the soft tyres was crucial for the top two in benefitting from the second of the safety cars and ultimately achieving their podium finishes.

“The soft tyre was a very good tyre today and also yesterday,” Beganovic said. “It was just very fast and the grip of it was very solid. Then starting the race, we were quite slow and we tried to be very flexible in what we could do. Once the first couple of guys pitted, we knew what to do, and we picked up our pace and we were able to match and be quicker than that. This is a good sign that everything went to plan and the safety car was just a bonus for us.”

“Definitely the soft tyre had quite a lot of performance, more than I expected even with how strong it looked in the sprint race yesterday,” Dunne added. “Most of the drivers who were on it yesterday ended up getting places and were able to maintain that, where I expected them to probably deg a little bit more towards the end.

“The performance of the soft on the first stint today is what helped Dino and I so much to finish where we did – being able to extend that first stint for so long and stay out and wait for a safety car. Even then, if there was no safety car and you asked, at least me, to do another 10 laps at the same level of performance, I think I could have done it because I was really impressed by how good [the softs] felt. They degged to a certain point and then from that point on it wasn’t really getting any worse. I just stayed the same and I was doing the same lap times all the time. That really impressed me and was the key point to having a good race today.”

Miyata finished third for his second podium of the weekend around the new Madring Circuit, making up six positions from where he started. Three laps before the flag, Dürksen made a lovely move into Turn 13 on Fittipaldi to claim fourth, feigning right and then going left to take the inside line and the position.

Having started 20th after a violent crash in practice ruled him out of qualifying, Inthraphuvasak finished sixth, making two pit stops under the safety car in the race. Gabriele Minì made up ground on his championship rivals with his seventh place, closing the gap to Tsolov to 24 points. Stenshorne was eighth ahead of Roman Bilinski in ninth, with Câmara’s penalty costing him only one spot and ensuring he left the round with one point.

It was a nightmare last few laps for teams’ championship leaders Campos. León received a five-second time penalty for track limits violations that demoted him from 12th to 16th, while damage for Tsolov saw him tumble down the order and come home as the last classified finisher in 18th. 

With three scheduled rounds remaining, the gap at the top of the drivers’ championship now sits at seven points thanks to the four points gained by Câmara over the course of the weekend compared with a scoreless round for Tsolov. A total of 117 remain on offer.

As for the teams’ standings, Campos head to Baku in a week and a half still on top on 296 points, 36 points ahead of Invicta Racing. Rodin remain third on 209 points with MP Motorsport in fourth on 190.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency