Marcus Armstrong scored his third Sprint Race victory this season comfortably from P2 on the grid. The Hitech Grand Prix driver made the better getaway from the front row and claimed a lead he wouldn’t give up, managing a late Safety Car restart perfectly. Fellow Kiwi Liam Lawson came home in fourth place.
“It wasn’t the easiest of races, despite leading from the front,” commented Armstrong. “It’s one of those places where you need to really look after your tyres, and it could go wrong at any moment in Formula 2.
“I know it’s the topic of my life so far, tyre management, but it genuinely is important and especially around here. I could have cliffed at any moment, so it was just a case of trying to stay under that limit and manage my gap to Clém. The start was very important, and equally so, the restart at the end. We nailed those two things and here we are.
“I think this season one of my strengths has been starts, and it was dirty on the right-hand side. So I wasn’t expecting to out-launch Clém (Novalak), but we did the job and my engineers got the right for throttle per cent and clutch mapping so I’m very happy with that. Then I just basically drove the thing. So really happy to have won that. It could have gone either way to be fair.”
Pole-sitter Clément Novalak held onto P2 and his first podium of the 2022 campaign after losing the lead at Turn 1, while Dennis Hauger fought past Jüri Vips on the opening lap to take his first podium finish since his Baku Feature Race win.
The Formula 2 Feature Race from Zandvoort takes place on Sunday, set for lights out at 10:20 local time.
Sprint Race Results
1/ Marcus Armstrong
2/ Clement Novalak
3/ Dennis Hauger
4/ Liam Lawson
5/ Jüri Vips
6/ Ayumu Iwasa
7/ Richard Verschoor
8/ Logan Sargeant
9/ Jack Doohan
10/ Felipe Drugovich
11/ Frederik Vesti
12/ Amaury Cordeel
13/ Enzo Fittipaldi
14/ David Beckmann
15/ Roy Nissany
16/ Jehan Daruvala
17/ Ralph Boschung
18/ Calan Williams
19/ Marino Sato
20/ Theo Pourchaire
21/ Tatiana Calderon
22/ Olli Caldwell
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