Duerksen sweeps Monza to equal the F2 wins record
The Paraguayan completed a commanding Monza double for Invicta Racing as Colton Herta's painful F2 season hit a new low
Joshua Duerksen is now one of only four drivers to have won eight Formula 2 races. His victory in the Feature Race at Monza on Sunday completed a clean weekend sweep and put him level with Artem Markelov, Nyck de Vries and Felipe Drugovich at the top of the all time list. He beat his own Invicta Racing team mate Rafael Camara to the flag, with Noel Leon third for Campos Racing.
It was his fourth win of 2026, and the second in two days after he had come through from seventh to win Saturday’s Sprint Race.
Camara ran wide at the first chicane and Duerksen was through
Camara started from pole with his team mate alongside him on an all Invicta front row. He got away cleanly enough, but ran wide into the first chicane and Duerksen was through. Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak made the best start of anyone, jumping from fifth to third, while both Rodin Motorsport cars went backwards.
That was not the end of it. On lap four Camara took the lead back with an aggressive move into Turn 1, and for a few laps the two Invicta cars traded places at the front. Then the pit wall stepped in and told them to work together rather than race each other, and Duerksen went back in front.
A team order, not a mistake, settled the win
This is worth being clear about, because the easy version of the story is that Camara threw the race away at the first corner. He did not. He recovered the lead on merit three laps later and gave it up because Invicta asked him to.
The stops decided the rest. Duerksen ran wide at the second Lesmo and Invicta used the moment to call him in for his mandatory stop. Camara came in shortly afterwards and rejoined behind his team mate but ahead of Alex Dunne, which was the outcome the team wanted. On cold tyres out of the pit lane Camara lost ground to Duerksen and had Dunne all over the back of him.
Two safety cars and a last lap that stayed close
Colton Herta put his Hitech in the gravel at the exit of Parabolica and brought out the first safety car. A second followed during the restart sequence. Duerksen got both restarts right and pulled clear each time.
Camara never gave up on it. He was inside DRS range in the closing laps, helped by the slipstream down the long straights and closed to around three tenths going into Parabolica on the final lap, but there was no way through. Duerksen then had to get out of his car in a hurry on the slowing down lap, because it caught fire.
Herta’s weekend was three incidents in three days
While Duerksen was sweeping the weekend, Colton Herta was having one of the roughest weekends of his career. The American crashed out of the only Formula 2 practice session on Friday after putting two wheels in the gravel at the exit of Lesmo 2 and spinning into the inside wall.
He then drove in Formula 1 first practice for Cadillac, which stopped after a single push lap with a suspected hydraulic problem. The car was stuck in gear and could not be moved, and the session was red flagged. Saturday brought 15th in the Sprint Race, and on Sunday he was running 21st when he lost the car at Parabolica on lap eleven.
Herta joined Hitech for 2026 as part of his route towards a Cadillac Formula 1 seat, and the season has been harder than anyone expected. He has qualified in the top twelve once in ten rounds. At Monza he was 20th, more than a second off the pace, and he sits on 26 points.
Tsolov still leads, but Camara has cut the gap to eleven points
Nikola Tsolov finished seventh, which was enough to keep him at the top of the standings on 177 points. Camara’s second place plus the fastest lap was worth 19 points and pulled him up to 166, cutting a 24 point deficit to 11 in a single afternoon. Gabriele Mini is third on 147, Alex Dunne fourth on 118 and Leon fifth on 114.
Campos Racing still lead the teams’ championship on 291 points, with Invicta second on 242 after their one two.
Our view: the record is real, the title is not
Eight wins in Formula 2 is company worth keeping, and he has done it in a series where every car is identical. That is the achievement, and it deserves to be said plainly.
What it is not is a championship charge. Duerksen sits eighth on 78 points, 99 behind Tsolov, and no amount of form over the remaining rounds closes that. The title fight is between Tsolov and Camara, and Monza just made it a lot tighter. Duerksen’s season is a different kind of story: a driver winning races in a car that is not carrying him to a championship, which is exactly the sort of record that tends to get noticed by the people who hand out seats.
Formula 1’s own Monza afternoon delivered a comparable shock. Kimi Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix from 19th on the grid, and the full classification is on our Italian Grand Prix 2026 results page.
