Marcus Armstrong has taken a lights-to-flag victory in the FIA Formula 2 Championship Sprint Race a The Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria. Having qualified tenth overall, the Kiwi started from pole position in the reverse top-ten Sprint Race format and comfortably led the entire 28-lap race.
“It feels really good and it’s a relief, really,” commented Armstrong. “Obviously starting off pole in Austria is never the easiest, especially in F2. Anything can happen and the DRS is strong. So to win this race I needed to have a pace advantage and I pushed hard at the beginning to try and break the DRS. And afterwards, it was quite smooth sailing, I think. Luckily, we had that small pace delta to just be reasonably comfortable up front.”
While an ideal getaway off the line helped, it was as much about keeping within the track limits as it was about speed and the Hitech Grand Prix driver expertly managed both.
Fellow Kiwi Liam Lawson’s weekend has gone from bad to worse. After having his fastest qualifying time deleted because of exceeding track limits, Lawson first had trouble getting off the line in the warm-up lap from his 14th grid spot and started the race from the pits. Having then made his way from last up to 19th, he then retired from the race with a mechanical problem on lap 17.
Thèo Pourchaire clung on to the second step of the podium ahead of Jack Doohan, whose late charge put the ART Grand Prix driver under immense pressure. Felipe Drugovich’s consistency continued with fourth, as Jüri Vips climbed up the order from ninth to fifth.
Richard Verschoor gave it his all to keep a rapid Logan Sargeant at bay for sixth and Ayumu Iwasa rounded out the points scorers in eighth.
Sprint Race results (Position, Driver, Team)
1/ Marcus Armstrong HitechGP
2/ Theo Pourchaire ART Grand Prix
3/ Jack Doohan UNI-Virtuosi
4/ Felipe Drugovich MP Motorsport
5/ Jüri Vips HitechGP
6/ Richard Verschoor Trident
7/ Logan Sargeant Carlin
8/ Ayumu Iwasa DAMS
9/ Enzo Fittipaldi Charouz Racing System
10/ Dennis Hauger Prema Powerteam
11/ Jehan Daruvala Prema Powerteam
12/ Frederik Vesti ART Grand Prix
13/ Roy Nissany DAMS
14/ Calan Williams Trident
15/ Clement Novalak MP Motorsport
16/ Amaury Cordeel Van Amersfoort Racing
17/ Jake Hughes Van Amersfoort Racing
18/ Olli Caldwell Campos Racing
19/ Roberto Merhi Campos Racing
Cem Bolukbasi Charouz Racing System
Liam Lawson Carlin
Marino Sato UNI-Virtuosi
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