Oliver Bearman took his third sprint race victory of the 2024 Formula 2 season after winning out in a strategic battle with championship-chasing Isack Hadjar.
Having started on pole for the partially reversed grid race with hard tyres fitted to his Prema entry, the future Haas Formula 1 driver lost ground early on to the medium-shod Hadjar.
But as the mediums on his Campos rival’s car began to give up the ghost, Bearman eased onto the rear of the Frenchman.
However, passing proved far more difficult, with Red Bull junior Hadjar snaking across the start straight each time in an attempt to break the tow and subsequent DRS gain.
The decisive moment came with three laps remaining, as Bearman braked late and dived past on inside at Turn 1, leaving Hadjar to express on team radio that he should have been more aggressive in his defence.
Things went from bad to worse for Hadjar when he spun at Turn 4 on the same lap, dropping to fourth as Jak Crawford (DAMS) and Richard Verschoor (back with MP Motorsport once more after parting company with Trident) moved into the podium positions.
While the majority of the field followed Bearman’s lead and fitted hard tyres, Victor Martins was the only other front-runner to copy Hadjar and run mediums.
Isack Hadjar, Campos Racing
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
While this enabled Martin to vault up the order on the opening lap from seventh to third, the reward ultimately failed to materialise.
For much of the race, Crawford was ducking and diving around trying to find a chink in the ART driver’s armour.
Just as it began to look like none would appear, and after two incidents noted by the stewards as Martins arguably forced the American off the track, Crawford was finally able to make a move stick at Turn 1.
The floodgates then opened on Martin, as Verschoor quickly followed past before newly-appointed Alpine F1 reserve Paul Aron forced a move at Turn 6 with the pair banging wheels.
Martins dropped to 10th, but it would have been worse had it not been for a late safety car intervention that took the field to the flag. This followed Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Kush Maini tangling at Turn 1 on lap 21, as the former attempted to avoid the slowing Martins.
The result means that Hadjar closes his deficit on leader Gabriel Bortoleto to 2.5 points, but this represented a missed opportunity ahead of Sunday’s feature race.
While Hadjar will only start ninth, Bortoleto will line up on the front row alongside poleman Aron, with an excellent chance of extending his margin ahead of next weekend’s Abu Dhabi finale.
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