Verschoor controls Austrian feature race to take victory and championship lead

Vyas Ponnuri
Jun 29
5 min read

Updated: Jul 7

Written by Vyas Ponnuri

Richard Verschoor took his third victory of 2025, and MP Motorsport's first at Austria since 2020, putting in a strong drive to move up from third on the grid to claim race victory, ahead of Alex Dunne and pole-sitter Leonardo Fornaroli.

The podium for the Austrian feature race | Credit: Formula 2 via X

Verschoor jumped past Fornaroli in the pit phase, before moving past Victor Martins on track to take the eventual race lead. He would hold off Dunne to win the race by just over a second.

Behind the podium, a penalty for Pepe Martí for causing a collision with Martins in turn 4 dropped him to seventh on the road, promoting three drivers recovering from poor qualifying positions, Jak Crawford, Sebastián Montoya and Luke Browning up into fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.

Martins finished eighth on the road, ahead of Fornaroli's teammate Roman Staněk in ninth, while Dino Beganovic recovered from 21st on the grid to take home the final points scoring position in tenth.

AS IT UNFOLDED

Pole-sitter Leonardo Fornaroli got a strong start off the five red lights on his super soft tyres, holding his position into turn 1. Behind, Victor Martins got a poor start, opening door for Richard Verschoor and Gabriele Minì to grab second on the road.

Verschoor grabbed the position into turn one, before attempting a challenge on Fornaroli's Invicta Racing heading into turns 3 and 4. Try as he might, the Italian held on to his lead, as the field settled into rhythm.

However, Minì's race went up in smoke, with the Alpine junior's engine billowing smoke at the exit of turn 9, as the PREMA Racing man pulled into the pits to retire from the race. He was joined by Ritomo Miyata's ART Grand Prix car.

More contact between drivers in the following laps saw Joshua Dürksen and Sebastián Montoya come off worse, as both drivers dropped to the rear of the field after suffering damage.

Among the biggest gainers on the start, Luke Browning had made his way up into the top ten, while Jak Crawford too made up ground to sit close to the points.

The drivers starting on the quicker super soft tyres began to make their pit stops from lap 7, with Martins and sprint winner Pepe Martí jumping into the pits earliest to trigger an undercut.

This move would work for both drivers, as the majority of the field jumped into the pits on lap 8, to swap their tyres. Martins, who had pit one lap before, regained his position on Verschoor at the end of the pit stop cycle.

Race leader Fornaroli was the last of the super soft runners to pit onto lap 9, pushing into the pit lane entry. Verschoor, who was radioed by his team to push hard on the outlap to jump his Invicta counterpart, just managed to overtake Fornaroli on the pit exit, promoting Martins to the net race lead.

Fornaroli, who struggled to warm up his tyres and achieve the optimum grip, lost more positions to the likes of Martí and Dunne. The trio scrapped away for a net third position on the road, with Verschoor and Martins much further ahead on the road. Meanwhile, Dunne's teammate Amaury Cordeel, who had qualified a season-best fifth, retired from the race due to an engine failure, blowing up smoke on the main straight.

Both de-facto leaders battled for the lead on lap 15, with Verschoor moving ahead into turn 3. However, he went slightly deep, as Martins managed to get back ahead in the traction zone off the right-hander.

Verschoor, though, utilised his years of experience to move around the outside of turn 4 to take the position on his counterpart for the time being. Meanwhile, among those starting on soft tyres, DAMS' Kush Maini led the race, ahead of Trident's Sami Meguetounif and Montoya, with Max Esterson's Trident and Cian Shields in the AIX Racing running in the top five.

The gap had dropped to under a second on lap 17 between Verschoor and the last driver on the alternate strategy, Shields, making for a tricky phase of the race.

Verschoor made light work of the AIX racer into turn 3 the following lap, while Martins slipped by into the right-hander of turn 4, with a dive on the inside of the corner. However, the delay in making the overtake dropped the Frenchman out of DRS range, heading onto the following laps.

Dunne, meanwhile, had started to pick up the pace. Having moved past Shields, he closed up to the rear of Martins' ART car, looking to utilise his fresher tyres to challenge for the race win.

Up ahead, Montoya, who had suffered a slightly bent steering, managed to take the race lead from Maini into turn 4, as he slowly recovered from his early contact with John Bennett's Van Amersfoort Racing car.

Dunne moved past Martins on lap 23, with a late move down the inside of turn 4, with both drivers making it out of the corner with room to spare. Verschoor, meanwhile, appeared desperate to move past Esterson's Trident into turn 6, a desperate attempt to avoid staying behind the dirty air into the faster corners.

Despite making his move into turn 1, Verschoor's time gap to Dunne had been cut in half, before extending the gap once again, as the Irishman then found himself stuck behind the slowing Trident.

Esterson's teammate Meguetounif became the first of the four soft tyre runners to stop, on lap 30, swapping for a set of the super soft tyres for his final stint. Montoya and Esterson pit onto lap 31, leaving Maini back in the race lead.

The Indian driver finally pit on lap 32, promoting Verschoor into the overall race lead, with Dunne in second, and third being debated between Fornaroli, Martins and Martí. The Frenchman maintained his podium, with Martí moving past Fornaroli.

The Red Bull junior would get too close to Martins heading into turn 4 on lap 34, tugging the ART driver and nudging him slightly wide. This move cost the Williams junior position to Fornaroli too, before Browning managed to move ahead of Martins the following lap.

While the Campos man was slapped a ten-second penalty for his actions, further contact behind saw Maini and Meguetounif make contact, forcing the Indian driver to retreat to the pits for a front wing change.

The battle between Browning and Martins became a three-wide battle towards the end, with Crawford scrapping away to move his DAMS car up into fifth. Browning and Martins found themselves in the clutches of a chasing Montoya, who had maximised his pace on the super soft tyres to move past Browning onto the final lap.

But nobody could stop Verschoor, who rounded the final corner to take his third win of 2025, and grab the championship lead from second-placed Dunne.

Further back, Martí's penalty dropped him into seventh, as Crawford, Montoya and Browning benefitted from this to grab more points.

A further collision ensued at turn 3 on the final lap of the race, with Arvid Lindblad and Ollie Goethe making contact into the braking zone.

The resultant contact sent both off the track, and the German driver into the air, as he was catapulted off the camber of turn 3 into the gravel on the exit of the corner. The incident earned Lindblad a ten second penalty, capping off a terrible weekend for the Briton.