The 2021 Formula 2 season kicked off with a bang with an exciting climax, where rookie Liam Lawson, who took the lead at the start from Theo Pourchaire, was being put under a lot of pressure from Jehan Daruvala. The Carlin had progressed, and once terrible luck befell the ART driver, as his car let him down and he had to pull over, he closed the gap to Lawson. But the Hitech driver managed to hold firm and win his first ever F2 race.
David Beckmann finished in third place, meaning we had 2 rookies on the podium, ahead of Robert Shwartzman, who drove well to progress to fourth from eleventh on the grid. Oscar Piastri seemed to manage his tyres better than anyone else, passing Christian Lundgaard, who finished sixth and almost getting ahead of his team-mate but he had to settle for fifth. Guanyu Zhou finished in seventh ahead of Dan Ticktum who had a time penalty for crashing into Richard Verschoor. Lirim Zendeli finished in ninth, with Juri Vips taking reverse grid pole for this afternoon and finishing in tenth.
Bent Viscaal finished in eleventh ahead of Guilherme Samaia who lost his maiden point due to a time penalty. Roy Nissany finished in thirteenth ahead of Matteo Nannini in fourteenth and Marino Sato in fifteenth. Felipe Drugovich damaged his wing in an unknown incident and finished down in sixteenth, with Gianluca Petecof and Alessio Deledda rounding out the finishers.
4 drivers did not see the checkered flag. As mentioned before, Theo Pourchaire had a car issue whilst running in a strong position. Marcus Armstrong also had a car issue and was hit by Ralph Boschung who couldn’t react in time. Whilst the damage from the incident with Ticktum put Richard Verschoor out of the race.
Here is the result of the season opening F2 race.
RaceWeek 