After an eventfull race, with two Safety Cars and one Virtual, Noel León won the first ever Sprint Race in Formula 2 in Canada.
Tasanapol Inthrapuvak, with his crash yesterday, won’t drive all weekend so only twenty-one cars took the start. All drivers were on soft tyres. Green flag was waved and Gabriele Minì had a great start, keeping his reverse grid pole. On the other hand, Rafael Villagomez struggled at the start, giving second position to Noel León. Joshua Dürksen managed to gain three positions. On lap 2, The Italian Alpine academy driver already had a 1.9 seconds lead.
Incident on incident
Dürksen missed the break on the last turn and gave the upper hand to Leon again. The Campos driver also made the fastest lap. Sebastian Montoya spun on lap 3, being last, just behind his teammate. The battle for second position was tough between León, Dürksen and Villagomez, a thing that they needed to be careful with since they might have experienced some tyres degradation. Varrone took a stop-and-go penalty for being out of position at the safety car line. A penalty he will serve on lap 10. Nikola Tsolov touched the rear of Stenshorne’s car, which resulted in the Rodin to touch the Trident of Bennett, creating a Safety car.
On the restart, Gabriele Minì had a rather mid one, almost losing his position to León behind. He kept his trajectory on the outside which gave him the advantage. Dürksen took a 5-seconds penalty. Him and Stenshorne both didn’t take the last turn correctly. With 11 laps remaining, the battle for the win was right on track between Minì and León, having a 3 seconds gap to the others. Alexander Dunne tried to overtake Dürksen but locked his tyres and made the Invicta spun. Noel León just had the time to overtake Minì when the second Safety Car was called. ART Grand Prix made the choice to make Kush Maini pit for supersoft with eight laps remaining. Cian Shields also made that bet.
Raining penalties
At the restart, León kept his lead and found himself in a bit of trouble with Villagomez behind. Alexander Dunne took a 10-seconds penalty, right after he overtook Tsolov, who also took a 10-seconds penalty. With four laps remaining, Noel León had a 2.4 margin. Stenshorne and Villagomez battled hard for the last place on the podium, but maybe a little too hard as the Van Amersfoort driver took the Rodin out of track by closing the door. Unfortunately, two corners later, the Mexican clipped the wall, putting an end to his race. Gabriele Minì got noted for changing too much direction on track. Mari Boya break on track, taking Nicolas Varrone by surprise who touched the rear of his car, and also surprised Shields, who did the same.
All of this chaos created a Virtual Safety Car. Green was waved again with one lap remaining. Minì and Dunne battled for second position but the Italian let the Irish through, as he knew the latter had a penalty. Noel León won for the first time in Formula 2. Gabriele Minì took P2, with Dunne’s penalty, and Martinius Stenshorne finished the podium.