McLaren Academy Driver Gabriel Bortoleto took an impressive maiden FIA Formula 2 race victory in the Austria Feature for Invicta Racing.
Bortoleto emerged in a net second after switching from super soft to soft tyres, but was able to dispatch Campos’ Pepe Marti en route to a maiden win in F2.
The reigning Formula 3 champion was followed by MP Motorsport’s Franco Colapinto, four seconds back but clinching the fastest lap after a late charge through the pack on the alternate strategy.
In the lead-up to the race, Hitech’s Paul Aron extended his championship lead over Isack Hadjar in Saturday’s Sprint, stretching the gap at the top of the standings to 16 points as Prema’s Oliver Bearman got his long-awaited first win of the season.
Aron and Hadjar lined up fifth and seventh respectively for Sunday’s feature, setting up an intriguing contest regarding the title picture.
Lining up from pole was Dennis Hauger, alongside Joshua Durksen and after both drivers finished in the points during the reverse grid Sprint they were hoping to fare well in Sunday’s 40-lap race.
But straight away Hauger’s race descended into chaos as the MP Motorsport driver stalled at the line on the formation lap, forcing him to start from pit lane along with Invicta’s Kush Maini and DAMS’ Jak Crawford.
That gave Durksen the task of leading the field from lights out and the AIX driver did a fine job of leading into Turn 1 with Gabriel Bortoleto, Colapinto and Aron in pursuit.
Not wanting to be left behind, Hadjar made a move on fellow Red Bull Junior Marti at Turn 6 to take fifth place.
Colapinto was the odd one out in the front pack on the soft compound tyre, trying to hold station in third with his surrounding competition running won super soft for their opening stints.
Lap 3 saw Bortoleto challenge Durksen for the lead with an ambitious look around the outside of Turn 6 but the AIX competitor held on, but only until Turn 4 on Lap 4 as the lead changed hands.
As the field came around to start Lap 5, the helicam showed the top five group of Bortoleto, Durksen, Colapinto, Aron and Hadjar looked set to stretch ahead of the rest of the pack.
A 1.6s gap had grown to sixth-placed Marti, who had Bearman for close company, leading a train of cars in the midfield.
Hadjar was growing frustrated with his title rival Aron, but there was no such frustration for Colapinto on Lap 6 as he cooly took second off of Durksen at the Turn 3 hairpin.
A Virtual Safety Car was shortly deployed as Zane Maloney came to a halt at Turn 4, but it was a brief deployment, allowing Durksen to pit on Lap 8, releasing Aron into third place.
Bortoleto pit a lap later from the lead a lap later along with Hadjar.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli also pitted on Lap 9 from the midfield, but stalled when trying to exit his pit box, showing his inexperience in the process.
Aron pitted on Lap 10, emerging behind Marti – sitting in the net lead of the drivers who stopped thanks to his convenient VSC stop – Bortoleto, Hadjar and Durksen.
Marti’s advantage over the drivers on his strategy was a significant four and a half seconds on Lap 11 as Colapinto led the race proper, as well as the alternative strategy runners, by five seconds over Bearman.
But the gap between Colapinto and Marti was the key one in terms of the battle for victory and on Lap 13 it wasn’t big enough to favour the former with a 22-second margin not large enough to pit and retain the lead.
The Williams Academy Driver would need to stretch that advantage by several seconds or rely on a Safety Car if he wanted to stay in the fight.
Marti too had a challenge on his hands, having pitted earlier than planned under the VSC, his soft tyre stint would be longer than the drivers behind him and he’d need to conserve his Pirelli rubber if he wanted to stay ahead of the pack.
By half race distance, Marti’s challenge was potentially dashed as Bortoleto had chased him down and passed him for sixth on the road at Turn 3 for the virtual lead.
Meanwhile, Bearman, who had been running second on the road, buoyed by his Sprint race victory, saw his race come to an end as he returned slowly to the pits with an apparent technical issue.
By Lap 23 it was abundantly clear that without a Safety Car intervention, Colapinto and the fellow drivers on the alternate strategy wouldn’t end in a favourable position with fifth-placed Bortoleto just over 20s off of the overall race lead.
Despite his earlier stop giving him track position, Marti was struggling by Lap 24, falling under pressure from fellow Red Bull Junior and Campos team-mate Hadjar.
But Marti was defending his position, triggering repeated complaints from Hadjar over the team radio.
The move finally came on Lap 27 with Marti likely following team instructions to let Hadjar into sixth at Turn 3.
On Lap 30, Bortoleto started moving through traffic, passing Zak O’Sullivan for fourth and looking at Crawford’s gearbox as further down the road, net second Hadjar was complaining his time stuck behind Marti hurt his tyres.
Colapinto’s long-awaited mandatory stop from soft to super soft from the lead came on Lap 33 and the Williams Academy Driver came out in eighth place with a fraction of laps to push on with the faster rubber.
When Crawford pitted a lap later it freed up the fight for overall victory between Bortoleto, who was two seconds ahead of Hadjar, who in turn was less than a second ahead of team-mate Martin.
Campos were urging Hadjar to push or give back position to Marti and the Frenchman bargained for a few more laps to attack the race leader.
Colapinto’s charge was gathering momentum on Lap 35 as he passed Durksen and Enzo Fittipaldi for sixth and fifth in the space of two corners.
As the Campos drivers squabbled with their engineers, Aron in fourth was drawing in along with the hard-charging Colapinto.
Colapinto took fourth from Aron and then third from Marti on consecutive laps at Turn 4, giving him a chance to attack Hadjar for second on the final lap.
The Argentine successfully took second place at Turn 3 but was too far behind to catch Bortoleto who took his maiden win by a margin of four seconds.
Colapinto’s valiant drive on the alternate strategy granted him the runner-up spot with Hadjar completing the podium.
A disgruntled Marti finished fourth with Fittipaldi completing the top five.
A penalty for Aron landed him in sixth place ahead of Durksen, Amaury Cordeel, Taylor Barnard and O’Sullivan, who completed the top-10.
After the race, the FIA handed a 10-second Stop & Go penalty, which effectively translates into a 30-second time penalty applied to the final classification to Marti since the Campos driver is unable to serve it mid-race.
The Stewards considered that, even if Martí was already on his way to the pitlane for his mandatory stop, the VSC was summoned before he crossed the safety car line 1 and therefore doesn’t count as a proper pitstop.
This leaves the Spaniard out of the point-scoring positions, dropping him to 16th and promoting Crawford to 10th.
