All to play for: F2 Summer Wrap-Up

A late summer break tees up the final burst of action in the 2023 Formula 2 season. After a frenetic July, the face of both Championships has changed, and it’s still all to play for heading into the final rounds of the year.

Who has the most to lose going into the dunes of Zandvoort and who will be looking for redemption around the Temple of Speed and Monza? Only time will tell, but it’s looking likely both title fights will go down to the wire in Abu Dhabi.

TURNAROUND AT THE TOP

ART Grand Prix made the most impressive start to the year, showing incredible pace around Sakhir and Jeddah. Théo Pourchaire surged to pole by seven tenths in the opening round and took Feature Race victory comfortably. Teammate Victor Martins emulated the Friday speed and repeated the feat in Saudi Arabia, but he couldn’t take a maiden win. Since then, though, the team has struggled to match rivals PREMA Racing. But July has swung things back in the favour of the French team. 14 podium finishes between Rounds 3 and 10 have kept them in contention, and Martins’ breakthrough has finally come at a vital point in the campaign.

Back-to-back second places at Spa-Francorchamps for Pourchaire has elevated him to P1 in the Drivers’ Championship and propelled ART to the top of the Teams’ Standings. Martins has the longest active points-scoring streak on the grid, going back to the Monaco Sprint Race in Round 5. He has been ninth or better in every race since, taking two pole positions and two fastest laps, now feeling more at home than ever before in Formula 2. ART has the momentum and the break in the season might just have come at the wrong time. But there’s a sense of redemption in the Pourchaire camp this year, while Martins is out to prove his early season struggles are long forgotten. Both are forces to be reckoned with for the rest of the year.

WHIRLWIND

What a difference 48 hours makes. As the rain fell around Spa-Francorchamps, both the PREMA Racing teammates maximised their Qualifying laps to seal a front-row lockout. Fast-forward to the end of the weekend, Frederik Vesti and the team lost the lead of both Championships while polesitter Oliver Bearman fell to seventh in a scrappy Feature Race. It was a weekend a world away from the lofty standards the Italian team had produced in the lead up to Round 10. After ART’s fast start, PREMA took seven race wins between Rounds 2 and 8. It included a record-setting weekend by Bearman, who took F2’s first ever clean sweep of sessions in Baku, ending each P1. But Spa has well and truly turned the season on its head.

A pre-race crash for Vesti left him helpless as Pourchaire wrestled the lead of the Championship back away from the Dane. Worrying Sprint Race pace materialised once more in the Feature as Bearman went backwards, and he has appeared on the podium just once since his Barcelona Feature Race win. PREMA is just one win away from equalling the F2 record for wins by a team in a single season, one it currently shares with ART. The Italian outfit achieved it in 2017 and 2021 while ART did so in 2018. You wouldn’t bet against PREMA at least matching the record, and the break has come at just the right time for a regroup and refresh. A 30-point deficit to their French rivals is a sizeable margin to make up, while Vesti has a 12-point gap to Pourchaire to overhaul. It’s doable, but has the title fight gotten away from them?

BREAKTHROUGH?

That is certainly what the team is hoping for anyway. Spa-Francorchamps was Rodin Carlin’s best weekend of the season by some margin. Enzo Fittipaldi finally claimed his long-awaited maiden victory in the Sprint Race and followed that up with P3 in the Feature Race on Sunday. Teammate Zane Maloney was a top 10 finisher in both races and narrowly lost out in a tough but fair battle between the two teammates in the Feature over the final podium position. It had become a theme in 2023 that on a weekend in which one driver would do well, the other would endure a more difficult time of things. Spa has broken that pattern. The question now is, can the team sustain the momentum and carry it into the final three races of 2023?

For Fittipaldi, the joy was unparalleled, and he has been driving with confidence this year even if the results don’t quite match on paper. Four podiums so far leave him two short of the benchmark he set last season, so the goal for the remaining races is clear. The fight for the top five in the Drivers’ Championship is shaping up to be a tightly contested affair, but the Brazilian is more than capable of lifting himself into the fight from seventh in the order currently. Maloney visits two of the three venues he was victorious around last year in F3 during his amazing run of three consecutive Feature Race wins to close the season. If he can add a few more podiums and top five finishes before the chequered flag falls in Abu Dhabi, it will be a welcome reward in what has been a tough rookie campaign.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT

Another one of the title protagonists to suffer a costly non-scoring result at Spa, Ayumu Iwasa now sits 34-points off the top of the Championship having been set to close in on then leader Vesti. DAMS has been one of the teams to lose out in a hectic July, dropping to fourth in the Teams’ Standings and fighting for any form it can. Iwasa’s Sprint Race win in Monte Carlo was the last victory for the French squad, and the Japanese driver has appeared on the podium just twice since. Rookie teammate Arthur Leclerc is in a serious rough patch in form, scoreless for the last two rounds. Where does the team go from here?

Up is hopefully where the trend will go from here. Last season, Iwasa was on the podium in each of the final three rounds at Zandvoort, Monza and Yas Marina. While he lost out on the Italian podium due to a technical infringement, all three are venues in which the Japanese driver is quick around. He will be hopeful of a repeat this season in order to keep his title hopes going to the very end. Through all of the struggles though, Iwasa has kept himself within striking distance of the Drivers’ Championship. If things go awry for Pourchaire or Vesti, don’t count the Red Bull Junior Team driver out.

Likewise, Leclerc put on an overtaking clinic at Zandvoort in F3 after an unfortunately timed Red Flag left him down the grid in Qualifying. He was in contention for the podium in Monza too, so has two races coming up where the form has been positive in the past.

HOPING FOR MORE

The first half of the campaign was not what MP Motorsport had hoped for. The defending Champions find themselves fifth in the Teams’ Standings with just two race wins and a further five podiums to their 2023 record. Dennis Hauger and Jehan Daruvala have endured mixed results, with both drivers’ form fluctuating throughout the campaign so far. It can be argued that the team should be higher up, with misfortune taking away early scoring results for Hauger in particular. But heading into the final rounds, the only way is up for the Dutch squad.

A podium finish for Hauger in the Spa Sprint Race was his second podium visit in two consecutive rounds. He will be hoping it’s the start of a turnaround in fortunes heading into the final leg of the campaign. Daruvala was looking like contending for the Sprint Race victory until a bizarre headrest restraint breakage forced him into retirement from the race lead. In the final races of 2023, both drivers will be targeting a repeat to the end of their 2022 seasons. Hauger was fourth or higher in five of the final six races last season, while Daruvala enjoyed his finest weekend of the season around Monza, third in the Sprint and victorious in the Feature.

IS THE COMEBACK ON?

Surely, he has too many points to overcome. Surely the upturn in form has come too late. That is not what Invicta Virutosi Racing or Jack Doohan are thinking. They are aiming for the top and why not, the Australian has been in supreme form lately. After a challenging start to 2023, the problems facing team and driver are firmly in the past. Back-to-back Feature Race wins including the securing of F2’s second-ever Feature Race Grand Chelem in Budapest has told you all you need to know about the Doohan title charge. It isn’t over until he says it is. He currently holds the best average Feature Race finishing position from the past five Rounds (3.2) and if he can keep that up, there’s no reason why he can’t be battling for the Championship come Yas Marina.

The team has risen to sixth in the Teams’ Standings as a result of their improved performances and there is a lot to be positive about going into the final three rounds. Teammate Amaury Cordeel has struggled somewhat lately, but it was the same way in 2022. Following the summer break, the Belgian put together his best form of the campaign, securing four points finishes in the final six races. He will be targeting a repeat once more to close out the 2023 season on a high note.

A SLUMP IN FORM

Van Amersfoort Racing have taken a little step backwards lately, but that’s only due to the higher standards they’ve set for themselves in the first part of the campaign. Richard Verschoor has a miraculous streak going of Feature Race point-scoring results, but a 16th place finish at Silverstone ended that abruptly. Juan Manuel Correa has enjoyed points scoring results this year and pulled off the overtake of the weekend in Budapest en route to a top 10 result. But both drivers have struggled to hit the ground running on most weekends.

Opting for a more aggressive car set-up has been the route taken at most races and walking it back from there to get a compliant car for the races. While it has had big impacts at some tracks, others have left both with too much to do on race days. The highpoint of 2023 is unquestionably the victory for Verschoor at the Red Bull Ring. Carving his way through the top five on the alternate strategy, it made for a titanic final few laps as the Dutchman took the lead late on and held off Iwasa for victory. It will seem like a long time ago now, but the team and its drivers are fully capable of recapturing that kind of form. Next up, a home race for Verschoor, VAR and the scene of Correa’s final F3 podium last year. What can they do at Zandvoort then?

ON THE UP

After making such a promising start to the season, Campos Racing went through something of a bad patch in the middle of it. Points scoring results dried up, mistakes were more common, and the misfortune piled on the misery. But there are shoots of recovery and the team secured points at Budapest and Spa-Francorchamps to give them something to smile about heading into the break. Kush Maini’s rookie year has been impressive so far, and the Indian driver will be eager to recapture his earlier form. Teammate Ralph Boschung was back in the points too in Belgium, showing his experience to guide the team to its first double point-scoring result since the Jeddah Sprint Race and Round 2.

While it might be a big ask to return to winning ways and the kind of performances that propelled the team to the top of the standings in Rounds 1 and 2, more points are the focus for the rest of the year. It shouldn’t be overlooked at the step the Spanish outfit has made compared to last season though. Last in the 2022 Standings with 67 points, the team is looking well positioned to break into triple digits this year in the fight for a top five in the Teams’ Championship. Pick up more points around Zandvoort, Monza and it could come to fruition by season’s end at Yas Marina.

INCONSISTENT SCORING

Another team to have experienced turbulent fortunes throughout the 2023 season, Hitech Pulse-Eight has slipped to ninth in the Teams’ Standings ahead of the final three rounds. Rookies Isack Hadjar and Jak Crawford have both been scorers this year, but neither has been able to thread together a consistent run of scoring results. Hadjar started the stronger of the pair, but it was the American driver who secured the team’s first and, so far, only win of the year, coming in the Red Bull Ring Sprint. Following that though it has been slim pickings for the pair, with just five points-scoring results between them. That’s not to say they have both been slow all year long.

It has been Qualifying where the difficulties have stemmed from. Like a few other teams on the grid, starting lower down the order leaves the drivers with a big job on their hands for race days. While there have been bright spots, it hasn’t gone in their favour often enough for their liking. Ensuring both are inside the top 10 for the rest of the year on Fridays is a solid target that both can hit. From there, Crawford and Hadjar should be able to demonstrate much more ably what they are truly capable of.

TOUGH GOING

It has been a difficult year for Trident in Formula 2, with the Italian team threatening to breakthrough into the points on a more regular basis but stuck down in 10th at the moment. Rookie Roman Stanek has been a bright spot in 2023, scoring on four occasions. It included a P9 result to sign off into the summer break with at Spa.

On the other side of the garage, Clément Novalak has faced a tougher time of it, scoring once after losing out on his Spielberg Sprint Race podium due to a post-race disqualification. For the Frenchman, the move back to the Italian team he has happy memories of going back to his F3 days hasn’t panned out the way he’d hoped. But there’s still time to sign off the season on a more positive note, and he’ll be aiming to reconjure some of the magic he had last year around Zandvoort where he made it onto the podium with MP.

IN AT THE DEEP END

Making your Formula 2 debut is no easy feat and that is especially true for Joshua Mason, who was on driving duty at a wet Spa-Francorchamps for his F2 bow. The Briton was able to log the laps and stay relatively out of trouble, a successful weekend considering the circumstances. PHM Racing by Charouz have known this will serve as a learning year in the team’s first as an entry in F2. Having the experience of Roy Nissany in the team will have helped build up the knowledge base and the team has come close to maiden points on several weekends this year.

It would be good to see them finally fire in their first points of the season before 2023 comes to a close. When they get things to click, the team hasn’t been far off a top 10 result. Sakhir, Jeddah, Melbourne and Spielberg represent near misses for maiden points. If things go their way, they should be able to score before the year is out.