Where being speedy doesn’t necessarily equal success
It’s that time of the year again when Monaco glamour mixes with F2 chaos, where no one can overtake but they can all pile up in a 22-car traffic jam, crash at incredibly slow speed or confuse the timing system. Plus yachts.
Practice: Super speedy Martins
The start of Practice was filled with the drivers either racing each other or queuing, plus a few scary moments because Monaco is a scary place. After several yellow flags, and a very nearly red flag courtesy of Leonardo Fornaroli spinning in the middle of the track, Amaury Cordeel finally pulled the plug and crashed straight into the barriers, causing an actual red flag.
A short while later, Practice was back underway and they were all using the closing minutes to try and do fast laps, but Victor Martins did a really fast lap, ending the session at the top of the time sheets, while Luke Browning and Fornaroli languished over half a second behind him in second and third.
Qualifying: Quite speedy Martins
As ever, to avoid total chaos, Qualifying for F2 in Monaco was split into two groups – the even-numbered cars and the odd. The even-numbered group was randomly chosen to go first and thus became the ill-fated Group A, who got to go out and warm up the track for Group B. For those who don’t have all the F2 car numbers right in the forefront of their minds, Group A consisted of Martins, Cordeel, Roman Staněk, Arvid Lindblad, Richard Verschoor, Dino Beganovic, Gabriele Minì, Kush Maini, Joshua Dürksen, Sami Meguetounif and John Bennett.
With a full 16 minutes to prove themselves, everyone was out on track, trying to keep up with speedy Martins. Luckily for everyone, Martins made a mistake on one of his laps, allowing Lindblad to have a go at being first for a moment before Verschoor stole it away from him. It wasn’t long before Martins was back on form though, taking provisional pole with a time of one minute and 21 seconds. Verschoor and Lindblad were second and third.
Next up, we had another 16-minute session for Group B, which comprised of Fornaroli, Sebastián Montoya, Alex Dunne, Pepe Martí, Max Esterson, Luke Browning, Oliver Goethe, Ritomo Miyata, Rafael Villagómez, Cian Shields and Jak Crawford.
Thoughtfully Dunne and Villagómez wanted to even out the inherent advantage that Group B usually gets by going second and so crashed into each other, bringing out the red flag, just as everyone was about to start their first qualifying laps. This drama meant that they all effectively only had 12 minutes to complete Qualifying and so they got to it, some less quietly than others, as Dunne barged past Shields and ranted on the radio about some unknown driver not getting out of his way. The brash approach seemed to work for championship-leader Dunne though as he was soon the fastest in the group, albeit still not as fast as super-fast Martins. In the final moments though, Dunne must have been channelling his inner Martins, as he flew round the track setting a new time that was three-tenths of a second faster than Martins, just what he needed to take pole position. Fornaroli finished behind him in second and Montoya third.
After 32 minutes of qualifying, it was time to finalise the process with The Big Merge of the groups. Because Group B got the fastest overall time, Dunne would take P1, while Martins would be P2. The rest of the drivers would then take their places behind Dunne and Martins in alternate order, Group B followed by Group A, meaning Group B’s Fornaroli was third, whereas Group A’s Verschoor was fourth and so on. Simple.
Sprint Race: Speedy front-wing change Martins
After merging the groups alternately and then reversing the top ten of the final merged version, Maini was on pole for the Sprint Race. Browning was second and Minì third. While Maini said he wasn’t taking anything for granted and Minì said he didn’t think there would be many overtaking opportunities, Browning’s only focus was on winning the championship, so out of character for him.
When the lights went out at the start of the race, Browning presumably saw the championship slowly disappearing into the distance, along with his F2 peers, as a slow start saw him instantly dropping down to fifth behind Maini, Minì, Crawford and Lindblad. Browning’s new position, however, gave him front row seats to Lindblad attempting an overenthusiastic overtake on Crawford, which actually just involved Lindblad ramming into Crawford on his way past, giving Browning the chance to also overtake as Crawford recovered. “Lindblad just took me out, report it!!” complained/demanded Crawford, probably unnecessarily as the move was hardly subtle and the stewards soon handed Lindblad a ten-second time penalty.
The next ten-second time penalty the stewards dished out went Villagómez, who spun Shields around in yet another (what I will now be calling) F2 Monaco overtake. The next complaint about another driver came from Dunne, who declared, “Martí overtook me under yellow flags!” Except it was Goethe and there were no yellow flags. The next person to execute an F2 Monaco overtake was Staněk, who crashed himself into the real Martí and broke his own front-wing end-plate.
There were also shenanigans ongoing at the front of the race, with Minì constantly hounding Maini in an attempt to get an opportunity to pass him. Meanwhile, third-placed Lindbland, with his 10-second time penalty, was hatching a plan with his team to back everyone up and create a 12-second gap between him and Minì in front, so that in the last few laps he could just hammer it and try to pull a gap between him and the cars behind, attempting to mitigate his penalty and stop him from dropping all the way out of the points. As a result, it really was just the top two who were battling for the win, with Minì’s engineer giving him periodic motivational chats along the lines of, “You’re much stronger than him!”
After a few laps of no one attempting an F2 Monaco overtake, Goethe decided to go for it on Dürksen. The result was Dürksen in the barriers along with the accompanying complaint, “Stupid from this guy,” followed up by saying he didn’t know who “this guy” was because “There are ten thousand Red Bull guys, it was one of the Red Bulls.” Relatable Joshua, very relatable. The Safety Car was deployed and Lindblad’s 12-second gap between him and the car in front disappeared. Clearly tired of trying to hold up the whole field Lindblad suggested his team just protest the penalty instead of doing that again. No one in the stewards’ office was feeling sympathetic. At some point during this time Bennett also managed to ruin his race by slamming his car into the barriers and breaking his suspension and leaving debris everywhere.
Once the Safety Car had returned to the pits, Maini continued on in the lead of the race, Minì continued trying to pass Maini, Lindblad continued trying to build a 12-second gap and Goethe continued his bargy tactics, with Martins the next victim of the F2 Monaco overtake. Goethe made it past but Martins’ front wing was damaged, resulting in a trip to the pits for a new one while the stewards, who apparently do know how to distinguish between the Red Bulls, opted for the classic ten-second time penalty for Goethe.
The drivers managed a few more laps without any drama, especially Martí who had nothing to do as he was stationary in the pits while work was done on his car. Lindblad also used this time to re-establish his gap behind race leaders Maini and Minì, but now it was time for him to put his foot down. Lindblad bolted away from those behind him, soon pulling out a five-second gap to fourth-placed Browning and almost catching Minì, who had dropped back a bit from Maini. Everyone behind was soon being told they needed to get a move on to to try and stay within ten seconds of Lindblad. Some were successful, others were not. As they crossed the finish line, Maini was first, Minì second and Lindblad’s plan had somewhat worked as he only dropped to eighth, the last points scoring position in the race. Browning was promoted up to third.
Feature Race: Speedy, angry, ranty Martins
As per the simple F2 Monaco Qualifying process, Dunne started the Feature Race on pole, with Martins second and Fornaroli third. Fourth place was Verschoor and fifth place was supposed to be Montoya, but he stalled on the formation lap and was condemned to starting from the pit lane. Normally a pit-lane start would be viewed as negative, however the next series of events proved very much the opposite. Despite declaring before the race that “there’s not much you can do at Monaco,” Dunne apparently found something he could do at Monaco, as Martins speeded ahead of him into turn 1 and was making a move around the outside, and that thing was clumsily crashing into Martins. Martins ended up in the wall while Dunne spun around, taking out Verschoor as he rebounded from the barrier, before immobilising Minì and Martí as his car blocked the track, leaving them nowhere to go. As the rest of the field arrived at the first corner, many were resigned to having to stop, with no way through, while others were forced to stop from the damaged caused in the pile up. Goethe summed it up best, “Oh my God, what a mess!” while Dunne said simply, “oh man…”
One person, however, emerged from the carnage. Arriving a few seconds after everyone else, Montoya completely avoided the chaos and was able to carefully pick his way through the stricken cars and rejoin what had now become a red-flagged race.
During the red flag, the marshals got to work cleaning away the cars, despite protestations from the likes of Minì, who insisted that there was nothing wrong with his car and he should be allowed to rejoin the race. The marshals carried on with their job regardless and there were soon desperate drivers sitting in cars in random spots behind the barriers. A little glimpse of Miyata here, a sad radio message from Minì there. Despite the on-track work, most of the action was now in the pit lane, where Martins was animatedly ranting about Dunne, “He thinks he’s Max Verstappen!” Other drivers were storming about looking annoyed and the commentators awkwardly tried to keep it light and neutral. As the camera panned to F2’s CEO Bruno Michel in deep conversation, commentator Alex Brundle suggested we just listen in to see what he’s saying, cue Bruno: “Honestly, I’m quite pissed off,” before a hasty Alex cut in to apologise for the language and switch back to talking about cars. At least we can trust that the cars won’t rant swearily.
Due to no actual racing having happened, Race Control decided to restart the race again from scratch, minus everyone whose cars had been broken or wheeled away to random locations by the marshals. Everyone who had made it back to the pits by themselves was back in the race. This meant Fornaroli was now on pole position, having managed to scamper by Martins and Dunne just as the incident happened. Behind him was Montoya, getting a reprieve from his pit-lane banishment and gaining three places in the process, and third was Lindblad, who escaped the initial incident with only comparatively light contact and the complaint of “I don’t know what the fuck these two idiots are doing.” Dunne, Martins, Verschoor, Minì, Miyata, Martí and Esterson were all out. For some reason, Race Control also decided it would be best with a rolling start instead of the usual standing start and so they all headed out behind the Safety Car, with just 32 minutes of racing left on the official race clock.
Fornaroli managed to keep the lead at the start, with Montoya and Lindblad holding their positions behind. Further back, seventh-placed Dürksen was trying to pass Maini, but could only manage an F2 Monaco overtake and ended up crashed into the wall, resulting in the Virtual Safety Car being deployed. A few minutes after the end of the VSC and some of those on the alternative strategy started making their mandatory pit stops. The pitstops unleashed an intense fear of losing track position by being undercut or overcut, and this combined with different drivers having a mixture new tyres/ old tyres/ cold tyres/ warm tyres meant that everyone was just pushing as fast as they could. Beganovic, however, took this too far and had soon crashed heavily into the barriers. The VSC was once more deployed, putting an end to all the pit stops, which aren’t allowed under the VSC according to the F2 rules.
As the top three, Fornaroli, Montoya and Lindblad trundled past the pit entrance, Race Control decided they needed the full Safety Car to appropriately deal with the Beganovic situation. The change from the VSC to the SC meant that pit stops were once more allowed, just as fourth-place Crawford was passing the pit entrance. No one has ever turned an F2 car at such an angle, with such urgency, as Crawford who, by his own admission, nearly crashed trying to manoeuvre his car into the pits. While Crawford was getting new tyres, the top three had caught up to the Safety Car and were travelling round at painfully slow speed for a whole lap before they too could take their mandatory pits stops. Extra misery for Montoya came in the form of a slow pit stop, allowing Lindblad to get out of the pits ahead of him, not that it was the most upsetting moment, as all of the Safety Car drama meant that the three exited the pits behind Crawford, who was now leading the race. Montoya apparently couldn’t take any more disappointment as he shouted, “How is that fair!? They let the top three go by and then put the Safety Car out!” His team replied that they agreed it was not fair but that he should calm down. It’s unclear whether he had calmed down a few minutes later when a red flag was suddenly thrown and Race Control declared that the race would not resume as there was also an F1 race that needed to be done.
All that was left was for winner Crawford to delight in how lucky he had been, “the luckiest day of my life, to be honest”, second-place Fornaroli to reflect on how he once again had not won a race, despite being so close, and third-place Lindblad to receive a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane. Lindblad’s indiscretion resulted in Montoya being promoted to third place.
After “the race” (if we can call it that), Dunne was given a three-place grid drop for the next race for being the catalyst in *that* turn one incident, while Bennett and Meguetounif both received five-second time penalties for Safety Car infringements. Half-points were then handed out (as the race was too short to award full points) and everyone went to hang out on yachts, I presume.
Championship standings: Hoping to be more speedy in the future Martins
After showing consistency and laser focus on the championship, Browning is now leading the way with 70 points. Dunne has slipped down to second (67 points) and is fast being caught by Fornaroli (64 points). Verschoor’s unlucky weekend sees him drop to fourth (59 points), while Crawford rounds out the top five (56). Martins’ bad luck in Monaco puts him in eighth place, with just 33 points. The old familiar track of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is up next, this weekend.