After the eventful qualifying yesterday, several of the timings that got deleted due to track limits got reinstated which includes Oliver Bearman getting back his front row for the feature race tomorrow and will start P8 for the sprint today.
Hitech’s Cordeel started the Sprint Race on reverse grid pole position with MP Motorsport’s Colapinto taking the front row for the Imola Sprint Race.
As the lights went out, Aron had the best start taking the leader of the pack from Cordeel who dropped second and Colapinto who dropped to P3. The Prema of Bearman and O’Sullivan had an amazing start jumping from P8 to P5 and P22 to P11 respectively.
A huge collision involving Hauger, Stanek, Hadjar, Durksen and Fittipaldi through Tamburello on the first lap caused the yellow flag to be waved which then caused deployed the safety car. O’Sullivan, Maini and Verschoor who avoided the contact had an advantage gained multiple positions in the Sprint.
Top 5 during the safety car is the Hitech teammates Aron and Cordeel taking P1 and 2, Colapinto, Maloney and Bearman.
After 5 laps of safety car, Aron had an amazing restart creating a 1 second gap to his teammate Cordeel within a lap. Colapinto then regained P2 from Cordeel as he went out too wide out of turn 18.
Marti was issued a 10-second stop go penalty by the stewards due to starting procedure infringement which dropped him to the back of the field with a 40 second gap to Crawford who is in front of him. Antonelli is also issued with an investigation after the race for safety car infringement.
On Lap 15, The Championship leader, Zane Maloney, tailed behind Cordeel putting pressure on the Belgian for the last podium place. At the same time the battle for first started between Aron and Colapinto as Colapinto pressured the rookie as both were chasing their first win in F2.
Colapinto, Hadjar and Stanek were noted for the first lap incident by the stewards.
Maloney snatched the last podium place from Cordeel down the front straight on Lap 23. Bortoleto is also pressuring Bearman for P5 only half a second down the Brit.
Last two laps and the fight for 1st was extremely tight from Colapinto and Aron only two tenths off each other. Unfortunately, Race Leader Paul Aron had a slight oversteer on the last lap which gave Colapinto the advantage to move round the outside and stealing the race win away from Aron.
Colapinto’s last lap lunge gave him his first win in Formula 2 as Aron took P2, his fourth podium this season with Championship Leader Maloney took the last podium finish for the Imola Sprint Race.
Huge congratulations to the Williams junior driver for his first win in Formula 2!
