Event
How Formula 2’s Barcelona feature race was won on the slower strategy
by Josh Suttill
8min read
Tyre degradation usually dominates Formula 2 weekends in Barcelona, and this year’s races at the Spanish Grand Prix were no different.
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Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya includes a number of high-speed corners that introduce lateral tyre stress - forcing the tyre sideways - and therefore inducing high tyre wear.
Both F2 races in Spain were therefore won and lost with the tyre choices made and the timing of safety car interventions.
MP Motorsport driver Richard Verschoor leading the 2025 F2 feature race in Spain
Building a buffer
F2 drivers had the choice of soft and hard compound tyres for Barcelona, with a big disparity in their performance and durability making for a difficult strategic choice.
For Sunday’s feature race, the top five cars on the grid opted for soft tyres, with DAMS’s Jak Crawford the highest-placed starter on the hards.
Those soft tyre runners had the initial advantage off the startline - important considering Barcelona’s run to Turn 1 is the longest on the F2 calendar.
Crawford had slipped down to ninth by the time the first soft tyre runner (AIX Racing's Joshua Duerksen) came in for his mandatory pitstop at the end of lap six.
Polesitter Arvid Lindblad waited until lap 12 of 37, knowing how little grip and performance the hard tyre had by the end of the 26-lap sprint race on Saturday.
He’d built a gap over fellow front row starter Sebastian Montoya (who pitted on lap 10) and Verschoor (on lap nine), that allowed him to make a later pitstop and still emerge ahead of both of them in the ‘net lead' of the race.
“The strategy, we knew [it] was going to be important,” Lindblad explained after the race.
Arvid Lindblad pitting his Campos Racing F2 car during the F2 feature race in Spain
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“The first objective was just to maintain the lead and then try not to abuse the tyres too much in the first two, three laps and then just try to pull the gap and extend the first stint and just sort of manage it from there.”
The trio were in formation as they started to cut through those hard tyre runners yet to pit, but Lindblad was able to carve himself out a smaller buffer to the chasing Montoya and Verschoor.
Meanwhile, the likes of Crawford and Bahrain and Imola feature race winner Alex Dunne were trying to extend their hard tyres, knowing fresh softs and a big performance advantage were awaiting them in the closing laps.
“I knew there was a risk, because the alternate strategy is fast here, we've seen that in previous years,” Lindblad said.
“So I knew that I had to look after the tyres as well, leave a bit in reserve just in case there was an unfortunate safety car or something.”
An unfortunate safety car when the hard tyre starters were leading would have given a golden opportunity for them to make pitstop for softs that lost them less time than under green flags, plus it would have bunched the field up.
That didn’t come before Crawford (on lap 22) and Dunne (on lap 25) pitted for softs.
Jak Crawford (DAMS) was one F2 driver foiled by the safety car timing in Spain
A slice of luck
Instead, the safety car luck went the way of Lindblad, Montoya and Verschoor as a loose wheel nut on Leonardo Fornaroli’s meant the Invicta Racing driver ended up beached in the gravel on the outside of Turn 3 with three laps to go.
The safety car was deployed and given the recovery time needed to retrieve Fornaroli’s car, the race ended under the safety car.
That halted the charge of Crawford and Dunne, who had just closed onto the back of Verschoor, having routinely gone over two seconds per lap quicker than the Dutchman who was tucked up behind Montoya.
“That kind of worked out in our favour today!” Lindblad said.
“I think the pace was still good enough throughout to have a good buffer.”
Verschoor agreed, believing he’d have held onto his podium finish without the safety car.
“I'm not sure if he would have [overtaken me] even without the safety car because I think his tyres were dropping off quite a bit, especially if you start to follow closely behind,” Verschoor said.
The run down to Turn 1 at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is the longest on the 2025 F2 calendar
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“But we will never know.”
It certainly would have been marginal, given the rate Crawford had closed him down, and Dunne just behind was 2.397 faster than Verschoor on the last lap before the safety car, so he was showing little signs of losing grip.
Given Dunne started down in eighth, was running fifth and could have been fighting for second without the safety car, you have to wonder whether the alternative strategy was faster.
So why didn’t the drivers starting at the front choose it?
For the most experienced driver in the field, Verschoor, that comes down to the risk versus reward factor for a title contender.
“In terms of risk versus reward, I guess the strategy is the biggest one that you can risk,” Verschoor said.
“I'm someone who likes to do something different, but for example, today the risk of having the safety car in the beginning was just too high, so we decided to go with the same as the frontrunners did.
“If I think, especially if you're fighting for a championship at some point, you have to step back a bit in terms of how much risk you can take, and that's what we did today, and it played out well.
“But let's see what kind of risk we have to take in the future.”
Either way, Lindblad was imperious for Campos Racing, taking his maiden Aramco Pole Position Award on Friday and controlling the race on Sunday, showing the kind of pace that meant he likely could have won on either strategy.
Lindblad took the Aramco Pole Position award on Friday and showed great pace on Sunday
Risk wins out in the sprint
In the sprint race, the timing of the safety car played into the hands of those who opted for an alternative strategy handsomely.
On lap 18 of 26 the safety car was deployed and Verschoor, who had stalled from third on the grid at the start of the race, was the first of those drivers to dive into the pits in a race where there’s no mandatory pitstop.
Richard Verschoor celebrates his podium in the Sunday feature race at Barcelona, after he won the previous day’s sprint race
They closed onto the back of the field before the race resumed and the softs offered so much grip - “insane” in the words of Verschoor - that Verschoor moved from 10th to first in just three laps, with Dunne (from 19th on the grid) and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Rafael Villagomez (from 22nd on the grid) completing the podium on the same strategy.
“The team told me very confidently to box,” Verschoor said after the sprint.
“I followed what they told me and, in the end, we had a great race.”
The unexpected superior grip of the softs in the sprint influenced those gamblers on the hards in the feature, but this time the safety car timing counted against them.
