Oliver “Ollie” Bearman took both top spots for round 4 of the F2 2023 season. He also topped all events this weekend and was 1 point away from a clean sweep for the Prema driver
It was a quiet feature race compared to yesterday Sprint race, however all eyes were on Ferrari Junior driver of Ollie Bearman to see if he could take the double a record very few have achieved with famous names like Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, and the most recent F2 2022 Champion Felipe Drugovich all achieving the double. However Ollie was awarded a new record as the first person to top all sessions of the F2 race weekend, as he finished top in the only free practice on Friday, took pole on Friday’s Qualifying, and winning both Sprint and Feature races for the points.
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At Lights Out
Once the lights went out Ollie was able to get a great start off the line to keep his pole position ahead of another F2 rookie of Enzo Fittipaldi and veteran F2 driver Theo Pourchaire. Victor Martins made the most moves off the line from 8th to 5th by Turn 2.
With DRS opening on Lap 2 Pourchaire was able to battle with Enzo moving up to second into turn 3 with the support of DRS. One lap later he was able to do the same to overtake Bearman.
Lap 4 saw the strong Prema car attempt to take back the lead which was successful into Turn 1 and never looked back. Down the grid two Red bull drivers of Jak Crafword for Hitech Pulse-Eight and previous Baku race winner Dennis Hauger in the MP motorsport battling for 6th position.
First into the pits was Fredrick Vesti to switch from the purple supersofts to the medium on lap 7. This then made other drivers come in at the same time to follow suit.
On the following lap Enzo and Victor pitted and able to get out ahead of the previous group that pitted prior. The race leader and second position driver pitted shortly after, coming in and leaving in the same order and way ahead of the other drivers who pitted earlier. Allowing the only 2 drivers on the alternate strategy of Championship leader Iwasa and Isack Hadjar to be the lead drivers for now.
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Virtual Safety Car Deployed
Its not been the best weekend for PHM by Charouz with Brad Benavides crashing in qualifying, Roy Nissay crashing in sprint, and in the feature on lap 11 Benavides found the barriers at turn 4 causing a VSC. However they were able to remove the car and start racing by the next lap.
Towards the last few laps
Ollie had a few close calls with the walls alongside the fast, narrow Baku street track, almost scraping the wall at Turn 15 on multiple laps as he began to drop Pourchaire to the tune of 2.3s by Lap
20.
A couple of fastest laps for Fittipaldi allowed the Brazilian to get even closer to Pourchaire and on Lap
24, he pulled off the pass for fourth position on the road which was net second after Iwasa and Hadjar’s mandatory pit stops. With the support of DRS into Turn 3, he was able to sweep around the outside of Pourchaire to claim the inside at Turn 4 and the position with it.
Iwasa makes hes stop with 4 laps left giving Bearman the lead of the race, but dropping out of the points on a crucial weekend for Iwasa after complications throughout the weekend.
Bearman broke away finishing comfortably to take the double and nearly all available points for the F2 race weekend, Fittipaldi was able to comes in second which on the radio he had no idea, and had to get confirmation from his team who thought that he was joking. Theo was able to finish off the podium, and take back the Championship standings ahead of Iwasa.
Martins finished 4th however he was later disqualified for technical infringements. This allowed Vesti to move to fourth giving more points to the Prema team after a 1-2 in the sprint yesterday. Kush Maini keeps the record of scoring points each race finishing officially 5th, Hauger comes in 6th, Hadjar with the late pit was able to still get some points finishing 7th and getting the extra fastest lap point, Verschoor 8th, Crawford 9th, and rounding out the points is Arthur Leclerc taking the last point on offer.
From the Winner:
“It was an amazing race. To take a clean sweep of wins this weekend is a great feeling. I’ve got to say a huge thanks to the team, they gave me the fastest car this weekend so really good job from them. It was a tough race, it’s always close and I had a lot of pressure from behind, especially at the start but once I managed to pull a gap, I was just waiting for a Safety Car or something bad to happen but luckily, nothing did and we managed to take the win. Really happy with this result and let’s keep it up.” -Oliver Bearman.
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Whats next in the F2 Season?
We have a bit of a break before we return for round 5 in Imola however they have a short test in Barcelona May 10-12 with Imola taking place from the 19th-21st of May.