Round One – Australia – Sport Grill

Roundup of the opening round of the 2025 F2 season which kicked off in Melbourne, Australia.

With regulations staying stable and a solid mix of rookies entering the series amidst several driver-to-team changes amongst those returning from 2024, this season already had the potential to be interesting even before the season properly commenced.

Australia therefore marked the first opportunity to discover which drivers looked ready for a title push this season, amidst the usual F2 chaos from collisions to safety cars and even a race cancellation.

Practice

AIX Racing’s Joshua Durksen and Rodin’s Alex Dunne were first out on track as the season commenced, but it wasn’t until DAMS’ Jak Crawford 1m 33.714 that the first representative lap time was set.

MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor however lowered that benchmark time to 1m 33.550 just ten minutes into the session, which was red flagged a minute later after Dunne spun out at Turn 14.

The session resumed 11 minutes later but the red flags were back out in the 27th minute after MP Motorsport’s Oliver Goethe spun out through Turns 9 and 10, before he grinded to a halt on the run to Turn 12 whilst ART GP’s Victor Martins posted 1m 32.687 to go quickest.

Once the session resumed 11 minutes later, Martins found a further 0.100 seconds to set 1m 32.587 as the quickest lap time of the session, which ended prematurely in the penultimate minute after Campos rookie, Arvid Lindblad spun out at Turn 10 after he touched the inside kerb.

Qualifying

Durksen led the field out at the start but during the two warm-up laps, Esterson spun Goethe around which saw the Trident driver suffer session-ending damage.

Up front, Durksen laid 1m 31.482 to go top but Martins delivered 1m 31.012 to go quicker by 0.470s in the first flying laps, but the pair traded the fastest second lap times before Crawford, Mini then Fornaroli displaced them as the latter posted 1m 31.036 then 1m 29.948 to sit fastest at the half-way mark.

Martins however snatched provisional pole back with a 1m 29.523 with six minutes left, but Mini ultimately snatched his maiden F2 pole position with 1m 29.286 in the 28th minute.

Mini however lost his pole position after he was found to impede Crawford during the session and was hit with a three-place grid penalty, which was applied to both the sprint and feature race following a rule tweak this season meaning that grid penalties are now applied to both races at each event.

DAMS, Rodin and Trident meanwhile received ten-place penalties for both of their drivers in both races following multiple breaches of regulations in pre-season testing which saw modification to a standard part in order to fit an air-pressure sensor, of which they were also fined £8.4k per car.

Stewards also opted ban to ban all three teams from participation for one day of the in-season test in Bahrain across 26-28 March, with the selected day being solely at the race director’s discretion.

All those penalties meant that Martins inherited the feature race pole position ahead of Verschoor and Stanek.

Fornaroli meanwhile inherited reverse-pole for the sprint race by virtue of qualifying in tenth position, before various grid penalties were applied.

Sprint

At lights out, Durksen beat Fornaroli off the line to take the lead whilst Browning held onto third as Verschoor leapt forward two positions to fourth, ahead of Stanek who held position as Beganovic slipped to sixth.

Further back, Martins hit the barriers at Turn 5 on the second lap and ultimately stopped at the next corner with suspension damage, which led stewards to deploy the virtual safety car (VSC) for two laps whilst Crawford retired on Lap 4 with damage.

On the VSC restart, the top four held position whilst Beganovic passed Stanek for fifth but the safety car was deployed on Lap 7 after Esterson lost the rear of his Trident at Turn 6 and suffered a heavy crash from which he walked away unharmed.

Racing resumed at the start of Lap 11 but one lap later, Beganovic spun out of fifth position but was able to continue unlike Meguetounif who spun out at Turn 10 on Lap 14 which brought the safety car back out.

Racing once again resumed on Lap 17 as Durksen saw off Fornaroli and Browning to make it consecutive race victories across two F2 seasons, whilst Verschoor and Stanek rounded out the top five ahead of PREMA rookie, Montoya.

Mini recovered seven positions to finish seventh from 13th on the grid, as Pepe Marti rounded out the top eight for Campos who saw Lindblad finish tenth following a penultimate-lap pass by Dunne.

Feature Race

After an initial 12-minute delay to the race start in wet conditions due to an issue on Verschoor’s car which required emergency attention, stewards red flagged the race just seven corners into the formation lap due to inclement weather conditions.

There were four further aborted restarts before cars headed back out 42 minutes after the initial red flag, but conditions had worsened enough to cancel the race in full.

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