The legend of the 2021 F2 championship

A long time ago, on a race track far, far away, young racing drivers battled to win points that could one day earn them the right to call themselves FIA Formula 2 Champion 2021. The history of the races has long since disappeared, with just a few tales remaining, shared between those with distant memories of reverse grids and ultra soft tyres. It was believed that the championship had vanished forever, until the points tally, etched into FIA stone, was found in the sands of Saudi Arabia. With much rejoicing, excitement and condemnation from human rights watchdogs, it was demanded that a new circuit be built and the Formula 2 championship could finally near completion. Distance, borders and an out-of-control virus raging through the world were not enough to keep the Formula 2 drivers from reassembling, only budget could come between F2 drivers and their destiny. Four were lost as they tried to scramble their sponsors and fight with younger, richer Formula 3 drivers who had heard of the legendary Formula 2 championship and were prepared to go to any lengths to experience it for themselves, but the one they call Oscar Piastri prevailed, returning with a 36 (ish) point lead and a determination to conclude the championship before it became nothing more than a myth.

Practice: The fellowship reunites

The drivers and teams travelled from across the globe, assembling at the Jeddah Corniche, in a momentous occasion marked with celebratory Instagram posts and the ceremonial looking at helmet designs. Once the festivities had died down, practice commenced, albeit with a 30 minute “operational delay”, which was also a handy excuse for the Formula 2 TV sorcerers to show full video highlights of the previous rounds to make us feel as though we remembered that there had been other races in this championship. A second break 15 minutes later, caused by F2 rookie Logan Sargeant crashing into the wall, gave us opportunity to pause and reflect on the fact that we did actually remember these drivers, although trying to recall whether they had been in F2 or F3 was a stretch too far.

Ralph Boschung was looking most confident on the terrifyingly fast street circuit, while Jüri Vips and Alessio Deledda were doing less well on account of spinning. While Vips managed to keep going, Deledda had visibly broken his car and was done for the day. The resulting Virtual Safety Car was finally recalled with ten minutes of the session to go. Boschung remained the fastest until the very end when Robert Shwartzman flew round, despite having to slow to avoid traffic. Boschung was second in the timesheets and Dan Ticktum third.

Qualifying: These walls you shall not pass (unless directed by race officials)

By qualifying we were reminded that this wasn’t the first round of an exciting new championship, but actually the penultimate round and we needed to pay attention to the three brave warriors who contended the crown. Attention was subtly drawn to the trio by clever F2 people casually asking only them what they thought of the new Jeddah circuit. Piastri described it as “Silverstone with concrete walls”, Zhou went for something a bit like Baku or Monaco, while Shwartzman went for a classic feeder series driver answer by referencing Macau. The consensus apparently being “it has walls”.

Similarly to the practice session, the start of qualifying was delayed because we’d waited so many centuries for this race, why not wait a little longer? Deledda didn’t take part, however, presumably because his car was still broken. Once things did get underway, all the working cars were out straight away to have a go at setting a good time, before the anticipated chaos began, starting with Piastri, then Boschung, then Shwartzman.

After a surprisingly civilised first half of qualifying, things got classic F2, with the not-at-all terrifying combo of extremely fast cars and extremely slow cars all crammed together on a narrow walled track. Weirdly this wasn’t the kind of environment that allowed anyone to improve their lap times, except Zhou, who desperately needed it. What wasn’t desperately needed by anyone was a puncture, but Dan Ticktum got one anyway, ruining his qualifying efforts.

In the closing minutes, the F2 drivers rose to the challenge and everyone managed to find some time somewhere, with Théo Pourchaire taking provisional pole for a moment before being quickly beaten by Piastri. Shwartzman was also flying but could only make second place, while things didn’t work out well for Zhou who finished in sixth behind Piastri, Shwartzman, Pourchaire, Lundgaard and Drugovich. Four points went to Piastri for his achievement and he edged himself closer to the elusive championship title. Piastri confirmed that his plan for the weekend was to win the title, while Zhou went for a more conservative goal of making the gap in points as small as possible, not that he’s too worried now he’s got his lovely F1 seat for next year, which after all is the ultimate goal of F2, with the championship title just a nice-to-have (I presume, having never been in contention for either the F2 championship or an F1 seat, ever. Shock).

Sprint Race 1: Becoming master of their own destinies

In accordance with the lore of F2, tenth-placed qualifier Liam Lawson (who said he just wanted to stay at the front) was on pole position for the first Sprint Race. Marcus Armstrong (who said he was going to go for it at the first corner) was second and Jüri Vips (who said he thought it was going to be tough) was third. Deledda was given permission to start despite having missed qualifying, duly taking his spot at the back of the grid, as is F2 tradition.

At the start, our clairvoyant top-three all met their destiny, with Armstrong going for Lawson at the first corner. Lawson, wanting to stay at the front, fought back hard and the two went back and forth, side-by-side until Armstrong eventually came out the victor. Vips, meanwhile, was indeed finding it tough as he had been overtaken by Boschung, who had a great start. The battles ended there, however, as the Safety Car was out, courtesy of too many cars crunching into each other in the opening corners, namely newcomer-from-F3 Olli Caldwell, who started the whole thing by running into Guilherme Samaia. The result was Caldwell pitting for a new front wing, while Samaia and collateral damage Marino Sato were being cleared away by marshals.

Racing continued for a minute after the Safety Car restart, as Zhou and Lundgaard had a collision, leaving Zhou facing the wrong way, with no front wing and complaining “he closed the door man!”. Zhou trundled back to the pits, while the rest of the field trundled round under the Virtual Safety Car.

Once the racing had restarted, Vips managed to regain third place from Boschung while everyone else also did lots of overtaking at the same time, including Shwartzman, who dove past Pourchaire for sixth place and completed the overtake by going wide off the track. Before Shwartzman could give the place back (if that was ever his intention given how much he was complaining), Lundgaard had also passed Pourchaire, and so they all carried on, with a sense of impeding doom for Shwartzman.

Boschung’s race wasn’t getting any better, as he was soon also overtaken by Drugovich before being engulfed by the pack behind him. It was manic. Further drama was thrown in at this point by the Keepers of the F2 Laws, who declared that Shwartzman should take a five-second time penalty for his dodgy Pourchaire overtake. Not that this helped Pourchaire who spun into the wall and out of the race. Safety Car.

In the closing laps, as the Safety Car period ended, Lawson decided to make a go of overtaking Armstrong for the lead of the race. It was a firm no from Armstrong on that, and the two carried on their battle, as was also the case all the way through the field. Now in the cursed sixth place, Lundgaard seemed to be struggling and had everyone behind him arguing for position. As Lundgaard defended hard against Piastri, Jehan Daruvala was suddenly also along side them, fighting three wide for position. Daruvala emerged the winner, having passed both Piastri and Lundgaard in one move, Lundgaard somehow managed to keep Piastri behind him. However, it wasn’t long before they were both being threatened by a speedy Ticktum, who overtook Piastri on the last corner of the last lap, and almost flew by Lundgaard as they crossed the line.

Armstrong also managed to keep ahead of Lawson for the remaining laps, crossing the line finally an F2 winner. Vips finished in third place, with Drugovich and Shwartzman behind, although Shwartzman’s penalty dropped him back to sixth place behind Daruvala. Luckily for Shwartzman it wasn’t any worse than that, as he had put in a super fast final lap, therefore managing to finish just ahead of Lundgaard, Ticktum and Piastri who were all within one tenth of a second of each other.

And so the saga continued…

Sprint Race 2: The path to victory is not always smooth (but please stay between the white lines)

Formula 2 legend has it that no race has ever been straight forward and as such it was decreed that there would be a new pole sitter, as Daruvala was handed a five-second post-race penalty for overtaking Ticktum off track in Sprint Race 1, meaning he dropped from fifth to tenth. The implication being that Daruvala would now start Sprint Race 2 from pole position. Bad luck previous-tenth-place-but-now-ninth Bent Viscaal (or congratulations? I can’t tell). Behind Daruvala, starting second and third were Viscaal and Piastri. Piastri just wanted the points, Viscaal just wanted to go as fast as possible and Daruvala just wanted to try and win the race to make up for his penalty that he didn’t really agree with.

The start of the race was a bit of chaos, including for Daruvala even though he managed to keep the lead. While battling with Daruvala, Viscaal got pushed wide, allowing Piastri and Lundgaard to jump ahead. Viscaal dropped down to fourth while Piastri was up to second and Lundgaard third. None of that mattered for the moment though as Armstrong, Novalak and Deledda were stopped on track and the Safety Car was out, with Boschung seemingly having crashed into Samaia and Novalak having hit Armstrong (Novalak later received a three-place grid penalty for the Feature Race). Deledda was there because it is F2 tradition.

Once the broken cars were all tidied away and the Safety Car had returned to the Safety Garage, the racing was back underway for a second. In simultaneous action, Viscaal made a (failed) lunge at Lundgaard, almost taking out his own front wing, while Drugovich and Vips were in a battle in which Vips lost his place to Drugovich and then tried a Viscaal-esque lunge, ending in him actually breaking his own front wing. “Aaaah man, I’m an idiot,” he cried as the Safety Car was back out.

Not wanting to cause more of a fuss, Sargeant’s car used the opportune Safety Car period to break down and was quickly cleared away leaving everyone to try to get back to racing, which they did, starting with a Piastri attack on Daruvala’s lead. Daruvala, clearly under pressure from Piastri, locked up massively, cutting the corner but maintaining the lead. Viscaal used the same moment to finally make his way past Lundgaard for second. Then it was more three-wide between Viscaal, Lundgaard and Ticktum. Lundgaard managed to get back at Viscaal, but not really in a way that could be described as on-track. Ticktum just piled on the pressure behind them. While the top five were now officially Daruvala, Piastri, Lundgaard, Viscaal and Ticktum, the stewards didn’t take too good a view of all the corner cutting, and promptly slapped five-second penalties on Daruvala and Lundgaard. None of this prevented Piastri from going for the lead, despite him only needing to trail around within five seconds of Daruvala to win the race. Instead he made several terrifying attempts to pass Daruvala, with Lundgaard, Viscaal and Shwartzman right behind trying to join in. Full chaos in the top five, who dares to look at what it was like mid-field.

Viscaal made several attempts at passing Lundgaard, all of which involved him going off the track and promptly giving the place back, to the point where he became a real expert at making sure only Lundgaard got past and not giving those behind him even the tiniest of opportunities to take advantage, although that didn’t stop Shwartzman from almost running into Lundgaard several times in his overtaking attempts. Meanwhile, up front, Piastri was having better success, as he finally made it past Daruvala to take the proper lead. Everyone was so close to each other, the five-second time penalties hanging over Daruvala and Lundgaard were painful, but little did they know the F2 gods were about to make it much worse, as Lawson was suddenly in the wall and the Safety Car was out. “I have no idea what happened,” a confused Lawson told his team.

The race ended under the Safety Car, with everyone trying to keep as close as possible to each other in an attempt to stay within five seconds of the rule breakers. Piastri, Daruvala and Lundgaard were the top three on track, but after penalties were applied, the podium consisted of Piastri, Viscaal and Shwartzman. Daruvala and Lundgaard dropped down to 14th and 15th. Suffering and loss are well known to those who choose the path of the F1 feeder series.

Feature Race: A temporary halt to the adventure

The Feature Race was delayed as they needed to make barrier repairs, presumably because everyone had been hitting them all weekend. The extra time gave us the opportunity to work out how many points Piastri needed to win the championship and for the F1 teams to start fretting that their meticulously planned weekend routine might be ruined. Forty minutes later, the F2 cars were finally on the grid, with Piastri on pole, Shwartzman second and Pourchaire in third. However, unfortunately on the grid is exactly where Pourchaire remained, as he failed to get away at the start and, with very little space to go and so much chaos, Enzo Fittipaldi smashed into the back of him. Instant red flag and hospital transportation for the unlucky two (who were thankfully not seriously injured).

After an extensive clean up process on the track and a bit of car fixing for Carlin on Ticktum’s car (who seemed to also have been involved in an incident at the start), the F2 Elders decided the race would go ahead, with Race Control having managed to quickly cobble together a format that somewhat resembled a Feature Race: a 20 minute race with a mandatory pit stop. Not chaotic at all.

The drivers made it back out for a rolling start and struggled on their already quite worn ultra soft tyres, except Lundgaard who was going for the alternative strategy and was on medium tyres. There was plenty of jostling for position until Caldwell lost it and crashed into the wall, taking out Samaia with him, as is F2 tradition. The Safety Car was called and everyone dived into the pits, except Lundgaard on the alternative strategy and Shwartzman, presumably because he had been too close to his team mate and everyone knows double stacking in F2 is not a thing that works well.

The pit lane was FULL. They were struggling to even get in and out of their pit boxes. However, with so much to clean up and so little time, the race was red flagged, not to be resumed. No one knew what was going on or who had won, until eventually some of the teams were told they could shuffle their drivers up to the podium spots. “So you think we’ve won?” Piastri asked his engineer, “I would think so” he replied, bearing in mind the mysterious count-back rule where the results are taken from two laps before the red flag, a rule which also meant Shwartzman was second. “Looks like we need to push the car to third place on the podium mate,” Boschung was told, with a reply of “Yeaahh!” Which is also how I celebrated a Boschung podium.

The quest for the championship continues

As had been foretold (and thanks to strong performances from Piastri and Shwartzman), Prema were declared the team champions, however with only half points awarded for the very short Feature Race, Piastri had to wait to wrap up his own championship and secure his name in F2 history. He now leads going into the last round with 213.5 points to second place Shwartzman’s 162 points. Zhou had a bad weekend compared to the Premas and is now only on 149 points, which may or may not be mathematically possible to win from, but feels like a massive gap so I’m going to assume it’s impossible.

The valiant Dallara knights will ride again on the morn of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend, (aka Friday), when the final showdown will commence. Well, Piastri has basically won and Shwartzman is probably more bothered about the fact that he gets to drive a Ferrari, but one can never take it for granted that the F2 Chaos Gods will let everything go as planned…