Ralph Boschung dominated Saturday’s Sprint Race to take his first win in the series. He was joined on the podium by Dennis Hauger and rookie Victor Martins.
Reverse-grid pole-sitter, Boschung led the grid away for the first race of the season alongside Roman Stanek. Stanek had a slow getaway and dropped down to fourth, giving second position to Arthur Leclerc in the DAMs.
Leclerc was put under pressure from Turn 4 to Turn 7 by his teammate, Ayumu Iwasa. There was little between the pair as they went wheel-to-wheel until Iwasa finally took the position before Turn 8.
The ART Grand Prix teammates had a storming first couple of laps. Martins crossed the line to start the third lap with an overtake into Turn 1 on Leclerc, taking third place after starting the Sprint Race in eighth. His teammate, Théo Pourchaire also made up five places by Lap 3.
Leclerc and Isack Hadjar were both awarded a 10-second stop-go penalty each on their F2 debuts for starting infringements, dropping them both to the back of the grid.
Pourchaire continued his charge to the front by overtaking Leclerc for fourth place. He then set the fastest lap of the race just one tour later, beginning to close the gap between himself and Martins.
Martins and Iwasa swapped positions throughout Sector 1. Martins threw a bold move to the inside of Turn 1. He held the position until Turn 6, bringing the ART of Pourchaire closer to the fight for second. All of this further helped Boschung out in front to extend his lead to over 3 seconds.
Martins eventually retook the position into Turn 8 on Lap 13. This also gave the opportunity to his teammate to make a move on the inside of Turn 10 on Iwasa. However, this only gave him third place momentarily as the Red Bull Junior driver retook the position later on in the lap. This left Pourchaire vulnerable to Hauger behind who took fourth.
Hauger then took advantage of a lock-up from Iwasa going into the final corner, promoting the MP Motorsport driver to the podium positions. Meanwhile, Boschung and Martins pulled away from the battling trio.
Jak Crawford (P15 at the time) was the first driver to be given a 5 second time penalty for track limits, quickly followed by Amaury Cordeel (P22).
Jehan Daruvala caught the back of the race-long battle for P3. He and Pourchaire added themselves to the list of drivers in this race to go wheel-to-wheel throughout the Turn 4 to Turn 7 esses.
Hauger, the 2021 F3 champion overtook Martins, the 2022 F3 champion for second place on the penultimate lap. Hauger seemingly has more traction in the closing stages of the race in comparison to his rival.
Boschung took the chequered flag for the first time in his career after 96 race starts in Formula 2. He controlled the race perfectly to stand on the top step of the podium.
The first race of the season gave us typical F2 chaos with a huge amount of overtakes. The drivers kept it relatively clean as there was no Safety Car throughout the course of the race.
Image: FML/Reprodução
