Seven times F2 drivers crashed with their teammates in 2020

The golden rule of motorsport, “never hit your teammate”. Tell that to the F2 drivers. Teammate crashing was so prevalent this season I didn’t even need to research this post. These are just the ones I remember happening, who knows what other dark things lurked in the chaos of this season’s races.

Carlin: Tsunoda and Daruvala

Yuki Tsunoda made a great start to his F2 career, endearing himself to his new team and the Red Bull Academy bigwigs, by crashing into his teammate and fellow Red Bull junior Jehan Daruvala on the first lap of the first race. The resulting spin for Daruvala and broken front wing for Tsunoda (which would turn out to be the first of many over the course of the season) ruined both of their races. As an extra bonus, Tsunoda stalled in the pits when he went to get his front wing replaced, before also receiving a time penalty for his actions, despite already being basically last. Both drivers did finish the race, but neither got any points that weekend.  

Trident: Nissany and Sato

Hungary was a great weekend all round for Trident. After qualifying, we found out that the team had fallen foul of the rules by putting the wrong tyres on the cars when going from the F2 paddock to the pitlane. Shameful. One-place grid penalties dropped Marino Sato and Roy Nissany down to 20th and 21st. 

After having had such a terrible qualifying and receiving grid penalties, Trident probably thought their weekend couldn’t get much worse, but Nissany made sure that it could, when, out of nowhere, he came flying into the corner, completely out of control, and punted teammate Sato off the track like he was playing skittles. Nissany was out, Sato was out and the Safety Car was also out. The event was nicely summarised via team radio -Nissany: “Sorry.” Sato: “For fuck’s sake.”

ART: Lundgaard and Armstrong, featuring Markelov

Bad lucked also rained on ART during the Hungarian Feature Race. Following the Safety Car caused by the Tridents’ crash, Christian Lundgaard found himself in a tense battle with Ghiotto for fourth place. Ghiotto passed, but Lundgaard fought back. The result was Lundgaard running into the back of Ghiotto, getting a puncture, and dropping back through the field, straight into the path of his teammate Marcus Armstrong. Armstrong made a valiant attempt to avoid Lundgaard (which he did), but in the process managed to shunt Markelov off into the wall instead. To add further insult to injury for Armstrong, he then had to wait patiently in the pits while the team worked on fixing Lundgaard’s car first, which turned out to be a total waste of time as a few laps later Lundgaard got stuck in fourth gear and had to retire. 

Prema: Schumacher and Shwartzman

Back at the 70th Anniversary race weekend, we were still all raving about how Robert Shwartzman was going to win the championship and Schumacher was only rated so highly because of his dad. Shwartzman was in a title battle with Ilott and poised to collect much needed points, being only three laps away from a Sprint Race win. Enter Mick Schumacher. Not content with second place, Schumacher decided to make the risky move on his teammate, going around the outside, but then Schumacher cut across Shwartzman, damaging Shwartzman’s front wing and gifting the win to Tsunoda, who had been lurking behind them. Schumacher kept it together, maintaining his second place, while Shwartzman was left with his front wing flapping about and a finish out of the points. Schumacher’s protest that it wasn’t his fault lasted a whole five seconds, before reality dawned on him and he spent what was left of the race profusely apologising over the radio. 

MP Motorsport: Drugovich and Matsushita

After Spain, Felipe Drugovich had been very vocal in complaining about his team costing him the win and allowing teammate Nobuharu Matsushita to win instead, which might have seemed like a low in teammate relations, but the MP pair set to rival that during the following round at Belgium. 

Things had started well for Matsushita, qualifying in third for the Feature Race, but that luck quickly ran out, as he was overtaken by everyone the moment DRS became available. Drugovich also made an attempt at overtaking, but that was apparently just too much for Matsushita who cut across Drugovich, damaging Drugovich’s front wing and causing himself a rear puncture. This sent Matsushita at terrifyingly high speed straight into the wall. It was such a huge crash that Matsushita’s car was a write-off and he was unable to compete at the Sprint Race the following day. Luckily Matsushita was ok, but he only did two more rounds in F2, scoring no points, before he disappeared off, saying that things had been hard since Belgium and he was going to do something else with his life. Not exactly ending his F2 career on a high. 

Williams Driver Academy: Ticktum and Nissany

The Belgian Sprint Race was a series of highs and lows for Nissany. To start he was on pole. He said he was excited and his team seemed that way too, as his engineer cheered him on during the formation lap, “We’re all with you!” It was lovely. 

The first few corners were total chaos, drama and excitement. Nissany was having a full battle for the lead with his Williams Driver Academy teammate Dan Ticktum, with only a small intermission while there was a Safety Car. I’m sure Williams were feeling very proud to see their young drivers in the top two. 

Ticktum soon managed to just about get ahead of Nissany, but then Nissany tried to come back around the outside, which probably wasn’t going to happen. The two collided and Nissany ended up in a very broken car parked at the side of the track, while Ticktum had a slightly broken car and managed to struggle on for 10th place. He sounded less than pleased on the radio.

Hitech: Mazepin and Ghiotto

The mid-field fight during the Tuscan Sprint Race was classic F2, and Luca Ghiotto was getting involved with it all. Close behind a bunch of other battling drivers, Ghiotto almost ran into the back of Schumacher and did bang into Markelov, but he seemed to get away with it. All this allowed Ghiotto’s Hitech teammate Nikita Mazepin to get past, up to fifth place, ahead of Ghiotto in sixth. Markelov, ever the casualty, was in the pits for a new front wing.

However, Ghiotto apparently hadn’t had enough of tangling with Russians and attempted to get back past Mazepin. As Ghiotto went round the outside, Mazepin locked up and crashed into his teammate. Ghiotto was in the gravel trap and out of the race, while Mazepin was branded an “idiot” by the guy he had described as a friend just the day before and had a 10-second time penalty. I’m sure the team were having a great time too.