Jehan Daruvala reignited his title challenge in the F2 feature race at the Austrian GP weekend by finishing second after starting 11th on the grid. To his benefit, the two championship leaders - Felipe Drugovich and Theo Pourchaire - failed to finish in the points, helping him claw his way closer to the top. Logan Sargeant finished the feature race in P3, and still is third in the championship, after he overtook Daruvala in the standings in the last Formula 2 race weekend at Silverstone, UK. Daruvala currently sits fourth in the championships with 98 points to his name, 56 points behind the leader.
Richard Verschoor was one of the multiple stars of the feature race. Having elected to start the race on dry weather tyres same as Daruvala despite the damp track, he struggled to get along at the start - same as all the other dry tyre starters - but did enough to keep him on the track. As the dry tyre runners started gaining temperature in their tyres after 3-4 laps, they started moving up the field rapidly, triggering the wet weather tyre runners to come into the pits for a tyre change. Formula 2 has a rule in which each driver has to make a mandatory pitstop to change tyres post 8 laps in the race, and since the wet runners stopped before that, they had to make a second pitstop later in the race too, whereas the dry starters had to make only one stop. This gave Verschoor an outright advantage over the other drivers as he was the highest placed driver in the dry runners, and once he gained the lead, it never looked like he would lose it as he was constantly covering off Daruvala's improving lap times. "We have a lot of races to go, if the car is as hooked up as it was today, I'm sure we'll have some more wins this season", Verschoor said in the post race interview.
Roberto Mehri was the other star of the feature race. Stepping in in place of Ralph Boschung in the Campos Racing car, Mehri started the race in P21, second to the last. But the driver made best use of the dry tyres he started on to move up to P2, passing the wet tyre runners and Daruvala in the opening stages. He however lost some time in his solitary pitstop, and dropped back to P3. The Spaniard preserved his second set of tyres and attacked Daruvala in the closing stages of the race passing him on lap 39 of 40, but the FIA stewards deemed that he had gone off track too many times and handed him a 5 second time penalty, dropping him down to fifth.
After having had a strong weekend in Great Britain and winning his maiden Formula 2 race last week, Logan Sargeant displayed a great drive today as well. The American driver started the race in P3, but had done so on wet weather tyres. This meant that post his pit stop to change to dry tyres, Sargeant was down in P14, and out of the points yielding places. He then drove an outstanding recovery drive to climb his way up the order, and finished the race in fourth position on the road. He was then promoted onto the podium post Mehri's time penalty. Sargeant is currently ahead of Jehan Daruvala in the championship, but the gap has reduced, and both the drivers move closer to the top two - Drugovich and Pourchaire - who couldn't manage to finish in the points.
2022 Formula 2 Championship Round 8 - Spielberg (Austrian GP) Feature Race Result:
2022 FIA Forumla 2 Driver's Championship Standings:
