WHAT WE LEARNED: Consistency is king as title fight takes shape

It was a weekend of unrelenting drama in Monte Carlo as DAMS Lucas Oil, Kush Maini and Jak Crawford hit the jackpot around the Principality, sweeping Round 5.

While Saturday’s event was a straight fight at the front for victory, Sunday brought twist after twist for the drivers to overcome around the famous 19 Turns of Monaco.

Lessons learned and patterns formed, here are the biggest takeaways from the fifth event of the 2025 FIA Formula 2 season.

A WIN IS COMING

While Crawford was perhaps the luckiest driver going on Sunday, Leonardo Fornaroli must be wondering what he has to do in order to be victorious.

The oceans parted for him at Turn 1 on the original race start as Victor Martins and Alexander Dunne suffered contact (more on that later), and his victory looked almost assured with the shortened race and scarcity of overtaking opportunities.

And yet, by the chequered flag, the Invicta Racing driver crossed the line in second position, an almost certain win snatched from his grasp in the final laps via an ill-timed Safety Car deployment favouring Crawford and DAMS.

While it will have been a bitter result to take in the immediate aftermath, he and Invicta can take solace in the fact that once again, Fornaroli was comfortably inside the top 10 in both Qualifying and the Feature Race.

He is the only driver to score points in every race so far this season, and he is yet to finish outside the top five in a Feature event.

READ MORE: Williams Racing confirm Victor Martins for Spanish Grand Prix FP1 outing

So, while he might not have luck on his side at the moment, he has no shortage of speed. His now trademark consistency has carried on from last year’s title-winning Formula 3 campaign last season.

LAW OF AVERAGES

Since returning to Europe after the three fly-away rounds that kicked off the 2025 campaign, consistency has become even more paramount for the drivers fighting at the top of the standings.

Two drivers stand above the rest in this regard, and their stats speak for themselves.

First, our most recent Feature Race winner in Jak Crawford has won twice in two rounds after he claimed the Imola Sprint a week before his Monte Carlo success.

The other is our new Championship leader, Luke Browning. The Hitech TGR driver has three podiums in four races and finished just outside the rostrum positions in P4 at last weekend’s Feature Race.

READ MORE: RACE ANALYSIS: How Crawford’s quick thinking put him on path to victory

Like Fornaroli, he too is yet to take a victory this season, but his approach to his first full-time F2 campaign has evolved after his experiences in F3, where he won races but didn’t clinch the title.

“I, for example in Formula 3 last year, had a nightmare in Sprint Races, but I think in Feature Races we scored the most amount of points,” Browning said ahead of Imola.

“So, this year I just want to collect the points in the Sprint Races, and I think our raw pace will take us through in the Feature.”

That kind of approach has resulted in him achieving an average finishing position of third since Round 4, a feat only matched by Crawford. The pair have the best average finishing position from Imola onwards, and their climb up the Drivers’ Championship standings comes as no surprise.

A COSTLY MISTAKE

Alexander Dunne started the Monegasque week sitting pretty at the top of the Standings. Unfortunately, a poor launch from pole in the Feature Race left him behind Victor Martins on the run to Turn 1, eventually the pair making contact, leading to the first Red Flag.

The Rodin Motorsport driver left Monaco having lost the lead of the Drivers’ Championship to Luke Browning, though remains in touching distance just three points behind the Briton, 67 to 70 points.

As a result for being responsible of the collision with Martins, the young Irishman has received a 10-grid penalty for this week's Sprint Race in Barcelona. It will be interesting to see how he rebounds from this.