Pepe Marti secured the sprint win at the F2 Austrian Grand Prix, but it was far from smooth sailing getting to the chequered flag. Let’s look at what happened:
Lap 2 collision brings out the Red Flag
Three cars came together heading into turn 3, resulting in Sami Meguetounif’s car flipping and landing upside down. As he tried making a move on the inside of Arvid Lindblad, contact was made and he found himself flying over the top of Williams F1 Junior Luke Browning. Meguetounif was thankfully alright after this incident, but the session was suspended for about 30 minutes to clear the scene.
During the red flag, other drivers found themselves with issues. Jak Crawford was unable to ger the line during the sprint formation lap, leaving Kush Maini. However, he suffered an issue with the car before the safety car had begun leading the cars from the pitlane. He was able to rejoin the session but a couple laps down.
2 Laps behind the safety car before a rolling start turned into 1 with Durksen leading the remaining 17 drivers after the green flag.
Safety Car back out
The restart truly underway and the battles for positions continued. Alexander Dunne, who found himself further down the order after his poor start, battled Garbiele Mini.
Just as it did during lap 2, turn 3 claimed another victim. Contact between Oliver Goethe and Dino Beganovic resulted in a spin for the Swede. This ultimatly DNF’d him from the race, bringing the safety car back out and landing Goethe a 10 second time penalty.
Upon the second restart of the session, Montoya took Dunne and Martins, and Durksen was slowly being gained on by Pepe Marti. By lap 12, the Spaniard was within DRS range.
Leader change into Lap 17
With Durksen making an error into the hill of turn 3, Marti was able to capitalise. The Paraguayan going wide allowed Pepe Marti to gain critical time on him, going for the overtake twice and keeping P1 on the second attempt. Turn 3 proved to be brilliant for overtakes in todays sprint race.
Roman Stanek was unable to pass the AIX of Joshua Durksen, who kept P3 as the chequred flag flew. Pepe Marti with a 2 second lead on Durksen came home to win the Austrian Sprint Race!
Tomorrow will likely bring similar challenges and battles, so fans should anticipate another action filled race!