Invicta’s Leonardo Fornaroli took his maiden FIA Formula 2 victory in Saturday’s Sprint Race at Silverstone in dominating fashion ahead of Sebastián Montoya and his team mate, Roman Stanek.
Their double podium promotes Invicta to third in the teams’ standings, moving them ahead of DAMS and Hitech.
It’s the Italian driver’s first win since 2021 in Italian F4, despite a consistent championship campaign in last year’s F3 season which earned him the title, despite the fact he never got the chance to stand on the top step.
His dominating performance during the Sprint catapults him to second in the drivers’ standings, just 19 points behind leader, Richard Verschoor.
He started the race on reverse-grid pole, ahead of Alpine junior, Kush Maini.
Maini managed to overtake Fornaroli at the start but a stunning wheel-to-wheel battle saw Fornaroli take the lead with a bold move around the outside of Copse later on in the lap.
Although the move was on the edge, both drivers managed to keep it clean, both avoiding contact and penalties.
During the post race press conference, we asked Fornaroli at what point he would start to consider the championship with only six rounds remaining:
“[19 points] is still a bit too much. Actually there’s still quite a lot of rounds to go. Everything can happen as we saw last year.”
“I will try to achieve as many points as possible and the same as last year, be consistent, always finish the race and collect data to be stronger the next day and achieve as many points as possible.”
Tomorrow Fornaroli will start the Feature Race from 10th after a disappointing Qualifying session but there is a chance of rain for Sunday morning’s race.
We asked Fornaroli if he thinks potential rain would benefit him and his team. He outlined that it would make it easier to pass, starting from further behind:
“We will try to gain some positions, we will see what will happen tomorrow and in case of rain we will have to change the set up, of course from dry to rain . We would have to do quite a lot of changes.”
Image: Getty Images
