Two maiden winners in Madrid, and a title lead cut to seven points

Two drivers won their first Formula 2 race at the Madring, and neither of them was the man leading the championship. Ritomo Miyata took the sprint on Saturday and Dino Beganovic controlled Sunday’s feature from pole, while Nikola Tsolov left Madrid with no points at all and a title lead cut to seven.

A burning car on Friday, sixth place on Sunday

The Madring introduced itself to Formula 2 in the worst way. In the first practice session of the weekend, ART Grand Prix driver Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak lost the rear of his car at Turn 19, spun backwards into the wall and watched it catch fire. He climbed out unaided, but the car was finished and so was his Friday: he took no part in qualifying.

That left him starting the feature race from twentieth. He stopped twice, both times under a safety car, and came home sixth. Eight points from a car that had been on fire two days earlier was the quietest good story of the weekend.

Qualifying was not much calmer. Three red flags interrupted the session, first for Sebastian Montoya into the wall and Kush Maini into the barriers behind him, then for Nicolas Varrone at Turn 19, then for John Bennett with around five minutes left. All three stood to lose their best times for causing them. Colton Herta crashed late without bringing out a red flag and kept twelfth, which turned out not to matter: he sat out the sprint and then withdrew from the feature after falling ill.

Miyata led every lap of the Madring’s first Formula 2 race

Saturday’s sprint was the first Formula 2 race the circuit had ever held, and it went to a driver who had never won one. Ritomo Miyata took the lead at Turn 1 from the reversed grid and was never headed, finishing ahead of Emerson Fittipaldi Jr and Laurens van Hoepen. It was a maiden win for the Japanese driver and Hitech’s first podium of the season.

Two safety cars broke the rhythm. The first came on the opening lap when Maini hit Varrone at Turn 8, an incident the stewards judged him wholly to blame for. His ten second penalty was converted into a five place grid drop for Sunday under the Formula 2 rules. The second was more expensive: on lap 14 Tsolov put his Campos into the inside wall at Turn 20, having struggled with that chicane all afternoon. The championship leader scored nothing.

Behind the podium, Noel León took fourth, Martinius Stenshorne fifth and Rafael Câmara sixth. Alex Dunne recovered to seventh and Mari Boya took the final point. Miyata also set the fastest lap, a 1:49.209.

Beganovic won by 7.320 seconds and never looked like losing it

Beganovic had put the DAMS Lucas Oil car on pole on Friday with a 1:44.331, two tenths clear of Dunne, and he turned that into the cleanest win of his career. He led every meaningful lap and took the flag 7.320 seconds ahead of Dunne, with Miyata third for the second day running.

The race was interrupted twice. Contact between Cian Shields and Maini on lap two put Maini into the barrier at Turn 18, and on lap 19 Câmara arrived at Turn 2 with far too much speed and hit Oliver Goethe, ending the MP Motorsport driver’s race. Both Câmara and Shields picked up ten second penalties. With eight minutes to go the race switched to a timed finish, which changed nothing at the front.

Dunne took the fastest lap on lap 29, a 1:46.257, and with it the extra point, but never got close enough to make Beganovic work. Joshua Dürksen finished fourth for Invicta, Fittipaldi fifth, Inthraphuvasak sixth and Gabriele Mini seventh.

Tsolov ran fifth, finished last and lost four points of his lead

Tsolov started the feature fifth and was running there when he pitted for soft tyres on lap 14. Boya passed him while he was bringing the new set up to temperature. His answer was an ambitious move around the outside at Turn 5 that sent him across the run off, and he conceded the places he had gained on his way back. The damage he collected doing it dropped him through the field, and he was classified eighteenth, last of the finishers.

Câmara did not have a clean weekend either. He was under investigation on Saturday for the way he rejoined at the Turn 5 chicane, and his ten second penalty on Sunday cost him a place. Even so, tenth was enough for one point, and one point was enough to take four off Tsolov’s advantage.

Madrid was round eleven of fourteen. Tsolov now leads on 177 to Câmara’s 170. Beganovic is the biggest mover of the weekend, up to 106 and sixth. Miyata climbed from 44 points to 70. In the teams’ standings Campos Racing still leads on 296, from Invicta on 260 and Rodin Motorsport on 209, the full table being on our Formula 2 standings page.

The Madrid results in full

Feature race, top ten

Sprint race, points finishers

Our assessment: the title is now a two car fight

Seven points with three rounds to go is not a lead, it is a coin toss, and the pattern of the last two weekends favours Câmara. He has finished every race this month. Tsolov has crashed out of one and thrown away a strong result in another, both at a circuit where the walls are close enough to punish an ambitious move immediately.

That is the part the Madring keeps revealing. It is not that the track is unfair, it is that it offers no margin. Inthraphuvasak’s fire, four red flag incidents in qualifying, Tsolov’s sprint crash and Câmara’s clumsy lunge on Goethe all came from the same thing: a street style circuit with no run off being learned at racing speed by twenty two drivers at once.

Beganovic and Miyata are the drivers who understood that fastest. Neither of them had won in this category before Saturday morning. Both left Madrid with a trophy because they kept the car out of the concrete.

Three rounds left and 117 points still on the table

Câmara needs to keep doing what he did here, which is finish, and Tsolov needs to stop handing points back. Beganovic is out of the title fight on 106 but has just shown he can win from the front, and Dunne’s speed at the Madring, two tenths off pole and a fastest lap in the feature, suggests Rodin have found something.

Our coverage of the Formula 1 race that followed on Sunday afternoon is in the Spanish Grand Prix report, the previous round of this championship is covered in Dürksen’s Monza sweep, and we follow every session live on the RNT live blog.