Câmara looking ahead to “A good weekend” after finishing third in Madring F2 qualifying
Formula 2’s inaugural qualifying session at the Madring proved tricky for all 22 drivers. But Invicta’s Rafael Câmara will leave the session on a high, delighted to have saved his race weekend with a last-gasp effort at the end.
The Brazilian, a five-time pole sitter in 2026, had an underwhelming start to qualifying around the fearsome Madring venue. His first lap time of the session proved good enough for sixth, unlike the meteoric pace he has shown across the previous rounds this season.
But on this attritional day of F2 around the Madring, these first laps were, if anything, only the tip of the iceberg. Drivers eventually found time by the heaps as the session went on, with Dino Beganovic’s pole lap of 1:44.331 nearly two seconds quicker than the same time set by championship leader Nikola Tsolov five minutes into the session.
The order of the day, though, proved to be interruptions, with F2’s practice session featuring a lengthy red flag period to retrieve the stricken ART of Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak. The 30-minute qualifying session stretched for nearly an hour, lengthened due to three separate red flag periods dotting the session.
This stop-start aspect of on-track action proved particularly tricky for the F2 grid, with the contingent of 22 drivers coming into the weekend and driving the circuit for the first time. Being short on track time at a completely new venue made the 30 minutes of qualifying all the more challenging.
“You want to have a good read and go into qualifying knowing more about what is going to happen,” Câmara said, speaking on the difficulties of limited track time before qualifying.
“On a new track, it is not what you want.”
The cracks began to show as the drivers turned up the wick in the session. Moments of oversteer at corners eventually left drivers on the edge, but some ended up well over the edge, in their quest to chase after the ultimate lap time.
The likes of Kush Maini, Sebastián Montoya, Colton Herta, Nico Varrone and John Bennett all found this the hard way, clattering into the barriers during the 30-minute session, and only highlighting the thin line of perfection around the circuit.
But with more drivers finding the barriers or experiencing moments of oversteer, it led to more interruptions, breaking the flow the rest of the grid had built around the track. Dialling in at the Madring was key to delivering the best lap time. As it played out, drivers eventually found several tenths of a second and gained confidence with every passing lap.
Yet, the probability of making a mistake only amplified at this tricky configuration. “If you think too much about the mistakes you could make, you can end up making one,” Câmara put it.
Sure enough, the Brazilian put himself on the list of drivers falling foul of the Madring’s challenges. As he commenced his second flying lap of the session, a moment of oversteer heading into Turn 1 sent him wide and off the track, forcing him to abort his lap before it had even gotten underway.
While it definitely proved less consequential compared to some drivers, the impact certainly had the potential to leave him far behind the rest of the grid. With the track rapidly evolving and drivers gaining in confidence, the lap times began to drop.
Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne briefly found himself over a second ahead of the next best driver, highlighting the scale of improvement possible on the day. With several drivers finding stronger lap times and lighting up the timesheets, Câmara suddenly found himself down in 12th, as the drivers eventually returned to the pits.
“It was not an easy thing,” the Brazilian recalled, speaking to DIVEBOMB about his session. “Without a representative lap, it makes you more stressed, and you think of just closing the lap and being in the top 10.”
It wasn’t yet time to hit the panic button down at Invicta, though, with over 10 minutes still left in the session. And Câmara’s ability to repeatedly find the lap time under pressure by adapting to the situation had held him in high stead this year.
With a fresh set of soft tyres and a new wave of optimism, Câmara set out onto the Madring circuit, eager to find the crucial lap he had been chasing all session. Yet, he would be denied the attempt to do so once again, this time by a red flag with only five minutes to go in the session, with Bennett’s incident on the run down to La Monumentale corner.
It was this very stop-start nature of the session that once again came into the picture, with the Brazilian driver finding himself behind by two seconds, to Beganovic’s time at the top of the timesheets, the benchmark lowered by another six tenths of a second.
But Câmara is a driver who has shown stellar pace in qualifying all through his career. It’s no surprise he has been class of the field through F2’s 2026 season.
His pole positions came in differing scenarios, be it recovering from a clash with a barrier in Monaco or picking his way through a tricky slipstream fest in qualifying at F2’s Monza outing just a week prior. Yet, his final qualifying lap may just have been as important as the poles earned this season.
A 32.6-second first sector and a 37.8-second middle sector did not quite earn the jaw-dropping emotions as some of the laps set by Beganovic and Dunne over the course of the session. But even as Câmara handled two moments of oversteer coming out of the final 90-degree right-handers, the magnitude of his performance may just have eclipsed the two ahead of him in the classifications.
At half a second off pole position and third in the order, it wasn’t the true reflection of the Brazilian’s all-conquering qualifying pace, but an insight into his abilities and maturity to extract the best lap time under trying circumstances.
“I was just really trying to focus on the moment and really what I could control,” Câmara reflected, speaking on his final flying lap. “I did not risk too much on the last lap, but overall I am happy with what we did today,” he expressed.
Only moments ago, he was down in 15th in the order, and a difficult weekend on the cards around the tight confines of the Madring circuit. It looked to have undone all of his efforts in closing down the gap in the championship to Tsolov to 11 points at the end of F2’s last event in Monza.
With the Bulgarian driver up in the top five, it would have dealt a killer blow to the Brazilian’s chances of building on his steady advantage in the prior three rounds. But with the final effort around the Madring under his belt, Câmara can now look ahead to the pair of races with optimism, and an opportunity to score yet more points and eat into Tsolov’s lead ahead.
“Now we're in P3, a good place for the races. And for sure we can have a good weekend from here,” Câmara concluded, excited for what was to come later in the weekend.
There is no doubt the Invicta man has been a superb qualifier in the championship in 2026, but the Madring might just have marked his finest effort all season. Should the title fight go down to the final stages of the season, the Brazilian might look back at this effort as the most important rearguard effort in this battle for supremacy between two F2 rookies.
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