Browning takes maiden F2 win in Monza Feature Race

Written by Morgan Holiday

Credit: Formula 2

Luke Browning secured his first Formula 2 race win in a dramatic Feature Race at the Monza track.

He battled back and forth but came out victorious over Joshua Durksen, and the final podium position went to Pepe Martí.

How it happened

Hitech TGR's Luke Browning started the Feature Race from pole position alongside DAMS Lucas Oil's Kush Maini, the pair having earned their front row start in qualifying.

Browning beat out Maini at the start, the Indian driver falling back after a poor getaway. Oliver Goethe and Roman Staněk jumped up to battle for second place as Maini was swallowed by the pack.

In an effort to make up the recently lost positions, Maini went off the track on Lap 2, which dropped him all the way down to the bottom of the order. Up in the top 10 positions, championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli fought to keep eighth place from Victor Martins. The pair traded positions a few times before contact led to Fornaroli losing a piece of his car and he consequently dropped down to 11th place.

Goethe was slowly gaining on Browning, taking the lead from him on Lap 4. With all 22 drivers on the same tyre strategy, starting on the option supersoft tyre, it was only a matter of time before pit lane got busy. It was Goethe who went first, diving into the pits to put the prime soft tyre on before getting held up and coming back out in 21st place.

Out in front, Browning re-inherited the lead but was under heavy pressure from Staněk. Then, on Lap 8, Alex Dunne went off track and hit the wall after being hit from behind by Arvid Lindblad, bringing out the Safety Car and bringing the flurry of action to pit lane.

With everyone's pit stops said and done, Browning, Staněk and Joshua Durksen maintained their places in the top three. Lindblad was sitting in fourth but picked up a 10-second penalty for the incident with Dunne.

The field went to green, but chaos at the restart quickly brought out the Safety Car again. First it was Cian Shields who went off before the drivers started racing again. Then it was Lindblad with front wing damage who was unable to turn the car going into Turn 1, running straight into Stanêk and ending the Czech driver's day. Lindblad was able to get back to pit lane and the Campos Racing team began repairs on his car.

The drivers would have been hoping for a cleaner restart on Lap 13 when the field went green again, but Sami Meguetounif brought out the yellow flags after getting into the grass and spinning into Turn 1. In the brief time they spent racing, Durksen was able to take the lead from Browning, the pair swapping places for the next restart.

Halfway through the race, only 16 drivers were left in contention after the plethora of accidents that had occured so far. On Lap 17 the drivers still on track went racing once again, Durksen leading Browning with Rafael Villagomez in third place.

This restart was much cleaner than the previous two, though Fornaroli had to take the escape road going into Turn 1, dropping two places from fourth to sixth but avoiding any sort of incident. Going into Turn 1 a few laps later, Browning with DRS was able to get back ahead of Durksen and re-take the race lead.

On Lap 20, Fornaroli was able to pass his championship rival Jak Crawford and get back up into the top five. A few laps later, Gabriele Minì was able to get past Crawford as well. Further down the field, another championship contender Richard Verschoor jumped up into tenth place past Sebastian Montoya.

The race settled down, and Browning was finally able to pull a gap of over one second to Durksen on Lap 27, now out of DRS range of his rival. In the battle for the final podium position, Pepe Martí and Villagomez scrapped and made contact. Martí won out and secured third place with just a few laps to go.

At the start of the final lap, Martí tried to make a move on Durksen for second place that he couldn't quite pull off, and he dropped back to third. But out in front, by over three seconds, Browning took his maiden F2 race win in the Feature Race at Monza, securing his first win over Durksen and Martí.

Villagomez and Fornaroli completed the top five, with Dino Beganovic, Minì, Verschoor, Montoya, and John Bennett securing the final points-paying positions.