The winners and losers from an enthralling Silverstone F2 weekend
- Vyas Ponnuri
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
It was one man going all the way in Silverstone, with Campos racer Nikola Tsolov ripping up the record books all through in Formula 2’s annual British weekend. But the weekend also witnessed several starring performances. Who made DIVEBOMB’s cut for the winners and losers this time?
Winner: Nikola Tsolov
It’s difficult to look past the obvious here.
Tsolov came into Silverstone high on confidence, on the back of a second Feature Race win in 2026 at the Red Bull Ring.
However, the shot at even a single victory, let alone two, was marred by Campos finding qualifying difficult, as Tsolov remarked that fifth was the best he could manage in the 30-minute session.
This set him up evenly for the weekend, as he would start sixth for the sprint and fifth on Sunday’s Feature Race. On both days, he would get a strong start from his grid slot, with an equal dose of risk lifting him into the top three.
Tsolov has been a confident overtaker in 2026, showing no fear in going around his rivals, even if they are his closest contenders in the championship. If Barcelona and Austria were the trailers, Silverstone would be the main picture, as he really showed his repertoire around the venue.
You could pick and choose which overtake was the better one of the weekend: If his last-lap pass on championship contender Gabriele Minì into Brooklands corner, you would be able to find grounds for his pass on ART’s Kush Maini around the outside of Copse, and into Maggots and Becketts to have raised the bar even further.
“I've been confident in the high speed during the whole weekend,” Tsolov remarked, confident in his abilities to pull off the move in the Feature Race. “I feel like I'm improving day to day and race by race, which is obviously fantastic to see.”
There’s no doubt Tsolov’s speed is visible for all to see, as he pulled off a raft of records in Silverstone.
He became the first F2 driver ever to win three consecutive races, the first Campos man to win the Sprint and Feature Race on the same weekend. Tsolov’s sprint win from sixth was also the lowest starting position for a win in the Saturday sprint in 2026.
Winning the Feature Race from fifth also matches his feat from Melbourne, while it also marked the furthest from where a race has been won on Sunday in 2026.
There’s also the small matter of securing a sixth F2 win, as Tsolov closes in on the all-time win record of seven in the series, held by Charles Leclerc and George Russell. But will he be able to achieve this, and grow his chances of winning the title? We will have to wait until the next weekend in Spa to find out!
Losers: Dunne, Câmara
Both of Invicta’s Rafa Câmara and Rodin’s Alex Dunne are stellar qualifiers through all of 2026. The Brazilian took his third pole of the season on Friday, with his average qualifying result on Fridays now at 2.57 after seven races, the best for any driver on the grid.
Likewise, Dunne keeps his record of qualifying in the top four intact, and the Rodin man has continually pulled out a great lap from the bag under pressure in 2026. The Irishman’s average Friday result stands only marginally shy, at 2.85.
Moreover, there was an air of satisfaction in the media interaction post qualifying, with both drivers recovering from track limit deletions early on to finish in the top two. With the duo of Tsolov and Minì only down in fifth and 10th, it presented a golden opportunity to the chasing pair to close down this gap.
Despite their best efforts, though, this wouldn’t be the case. While they finished on the fringes of the top 10 in the sprint, Dunne and Câmara’s poor starts off the line cost them big time. Maini and Tsolov both made their way past with ease, and the duo would later lose out to the high-flying VAR of Rafael Villagómez, coming around to only finish fourth and fifth in the end.
With Tsolov’s win, both drivers now sit much further adrift, with Câmara now 47 points away and Dunne 49 off the Bulgarian’s tally in the standings, at the halfway point of the season, with their Friday pace not reflecting on the scoresheets come the end of Sunday.
Winner: Rafael Villagómez
Silverstone saw a unique occurrence, with the same two drivers finishing on the podium in Saturday and Sunday’s races. While one of them was the unstoppable force of Tsolov, the other was a lesser-fancied contender in VAR’s Rafael Villagómez.
It’s been a superb turnaround for the Mexican driver, who went scoreless until the Austrian round, but now sits 10th in the standings after his best F2 weekend by far in Silverstone.
Villagómez has certainly found a new lease of form, but even he wouldn’t have been prepared for the overwhelming success in Silverstone. Qualifying in the top 10 for the fourth time in 2026, the VAR man stood a chance of scoring for the second weekend in succession.
While he would play second fiddle to the leading pair of Tsolov and Minì in the sprint, coming home third on the road, it was his drive in the Feature Race that turned heads.
Starting on the hard tyres, the VAR man quickly ascended towards the front, even as the front-runners came in for their mandatory pit stops on their worn soft tyres. With the leading contenders out of the way, Villagómez put in a barnstorming stint, opening up the gap to second-placed Joshua Dürksen to almost seven seconds in over 20 laps.
Having kept pace with the front runners as he made his pit stop, Villagómez emerged behind the Invicta of Câmara in a net fifth place.
He would make light work of the Brazilian before surpassing the duo of Dunne and Maini and sitting second. While he would only close down the gap to winner Tsolov to three seconds, it would arguably mark one of the best drivers in the Mexican’s F2 career, as he looks to have finally found the tempo where he left off in 2025.
“Since Barcelona, I think we're close again and then finally in Red Bull Ring it started to happen,” the Mexican responded, on his resurgence in 2026.
Loser: Trident
After the joys of Austria and a first win, Silverstone turned out to be a harsher one for Trident, with neither Laurens van Hoepen nor John Bennett scoring any points during the weekend.
While Bennett would place eighth in the sole free practice session on home soil, both drivers would return from qualifying only 18th and 20th in the order. Bennett would fall foul of a strange Lap 1 incident in the sprint, veering into the gravel before running into Sebastián Montoya and coming to a stop towards the pit wall.
Van Hoepen would only come home 14th on the road. Both drivers attempted to run split strategies, as Bennett started on the hard tyres in the Feature Race, with van Hoepen on the softs. Although it wouldn’t pay off, as the Dutchman came home down in 17th, while Bennett just missed out on the points once again, finishing 11th.
Winner: Kush Maini
It’s been an up-and-down career for Maini in F2 so far, but Silverstone may have just marked one of his best weekends in the entire championship for the Indian driver.
While sprint races have always been the ART man’s space to score big results, his pace in the Feature Race delivered plenty of positivity to the French team’s garage, giving them plenty of confidence for the future rounds.
Maini initially sat atop the qualifying charts on Friday, before Câmara and Dunne eclipsed his time by two tenths of a second. Even still, it was a solid starting position for the Alpine junior, who looked for yet more points in 2026.
Starting eighth for the sprint, a strong start for Maini lifted him up into sixth, before he dived down the inside of Ritomo Miyata into Village corner for fifth on Lap 2.
Thereafter, he would chase down Invicta’s Dürksen, closing in on the Invicta man before sending it around the outside of the Paraguayan late in the race. He would finish fourth in the order, unsuccessful in his quest for a podium.
Another excellent start put Maini in the lead for the Feature Race, and he managed to fend off Tsolov’s attack for the two-thirds of the race. The Indian would mention his rear tyres faced more wear, and he wouldn’t be able to fend off the Bulgarian, who pulled off a sensational move into Copse corner to take the lead.
Despite losing out to Villagómez for second, Maini brought home only his second Feature Race podium in all of F2, and his first since Jeddah in 2024. This was also his best scoring race weekend since that day, as it lifted him to sixth in the standings.
Loser: Martinius Stenshorne
It appears as though Martinius Stenshorne’s season has dropped away by a long way in the last three European weekends.
Having sat ahead of teammate Dunne in the standings, the Norwegian has now dropped down to eighth, after another difficult pair of races in Silverstone left him disconsolate.
Qualifying 17th on the road, the Rodin man would make up several positions at the start, even having a shot at Câmara for what was 12th on the road. He would make up the position at the Vale chicane, forcing the Brazilian off the track in the process, and kickstarting the bunching up of the pack that led to the Bennett - Montoya incident.
Stenshorne would also be tipped around by the VAR of Nico Varrone on the exit of the chicane later on, and pit for repairs, coming out in 20th. His day would go from bad to worse, with a 10-second penalty imposed for his Lap 1 actions on Câmara. It would have no effect to his finishing position.
He wouldn’t get a right of reply in the Feature Race, with the engine at the back of the Rodin car going up in flames, and Stenshorne was forced to stop on the run down to Copse, failing to start the race.
A torrid weekend for the Norwegian youngster, who has now gone six races without a point, after starting the season superbly.
Winner: Noel León
A regular figure in the top 10 in 2026, Campos’ Noel León endured a torrid qualifying session in Silverstone. He would qualify only 16th on the road, with the ever-consistent Mexican unable to make the top 10 for only the second time in 2026.
With Campos making changes to the car over the course of the weekend, León fought harder over the course of the sprint, making a double overtake on Stenshorne and Câmara to sit 12th on the road at one point.
Despite losing position, he would come home to finish in the same place. However, it was in the Feature Race when León would reap the bigger rewards.
Starting on the hard tyres, León followed in the tracks of Villagómez and Dürksen, before his late pit stop enabled him to make a charge on the soft compound tyres.
Passing cars at will, he would rise up to seventh on the road, behind fellow soft-tyred Minì, climbing nine spots from his starting position to keep his run of scoring points in every weekend going.
Loser: Ritomo Miyata
Having started 2026 on a strong note, Hitech’s Ritomo Miyata has endured a torrid run over the course of the prior three weekends.
Despite scoring ninth in qualifying and starting second for the sprint, Miyata failed to sustain his position over the course of the race, sliding down the order as his tyres wore out, finishing 11th on Saturday.
Likewise, he would lose out big time in the Feature Race, only coming home to finish 14th at the flag, with his stranglehold on 10th in the championship coming to an end.
With the Japanese driver also failing to convert his sprint front row into a podium, Hitech remain as one of the two teams to have not scored a rostrum finish in 2026, alongside AIX Racing.
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