Why Baku presented the toughest F2 challenge of the 2025 season

Tougher than driving in the wet? 

The weekend started with calm conditions on Friday, with the wind speed limited to five kilometres per hour, with minimal wind, but the F2 field woke up on Saturday to winds of up to 40 kilometres per hour. 

Therefore, drivers had to adapt to completely different conditions from what they’d experienced just one day prior, as they prepared to jump straight into their sprint race on Saturday afternoon, as their first on-track running in those conditions. 

An added complication was the gustiness of the wind, which was changing direction and intensity corner by corner and lap after lap. 

Plus, there were also spots of rain towards the end of the race that made the heavy braking zones even more perilous. 

“That is probably one of the toughest conditions I've ever raced in, and that includes the wet,” second-place finisher in the sprint race, Luke Browning said.

“I love the wet and sometimes the non-visibility for me is not an issue. But today's wind with how unpredictable it was, was super tough. 

“The intermittent rain in the last sector, I went through one lap and had no grip and then the next lap was completely fine, so it was just evolving so fast. 

“I wouldn't have liked to have been the first one through there, I was very much gauging it off how quickly Dino [Beganovic, race leader and winner] went through, so that was nice to have.” 

An invisible obstacle 

F2 drivers were losing time on the straights when they were facing a headwind, in particular on the long start/finish straight into Turn 1. 

While it can lead to instability when braking, drivers feel the wind the most on the straights, when they’re at their highest speed - the faster you’re going, the more affected you are by the wind. 

“It's super strange on the straight, especially when I was out in clean air, my car was moving side to side uncontrollably sometimes,” Crawford explained.

“And there were times as well where my speed just randomly dropped on the straight and just from a massive gust of headwind, so yeah, it's quite strange to drive.”  

The wind - especially a headwind that is coming directly at the car - is like a 30-40km/h invisible obstacle pushing against the 620 brake horsepower of the 3.4 litre turbocharged Mechachrome F2 engine. 

“I felt it mainly in the main straight and also in the straight into Turn 3,” AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen, who charged from 15th to second in the feature race, said. 

“Luckily, in the corners I couldn't feel it that much because of course we're going at much slower speeds and we're a bit more in the hidden side, between the buildings so of course the wind is a bit less from there.

How it’s different to F1 

The constant wind changes were also a big topic during the F1 running. In fact, most F2 drivers watched the final F1 practice session and saw drivers struggling with the changing conditions. 

“A lot of the drivers in [third F1 practice] were mentioning about Turn 4 and the wind, how it funnels there and they’re struggling with understeer,” Browning explained.  

“In a Formula 1 car they go in the windtunnel and develop the car in a way that in the side wind angle, they have less understeer. 

“For us we've all got the same car, all been the same car since the beginning of the championship and with this ground effect car, it's very difficult to manage the way that the air goes through and then how the downforce affects.

“I think it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack sometimes if you've got wind coming from different angles, especially up to 30-40km/h. 

“I think from [Friday to Saturday] that swing going from 0-5km/h to now 30-40km/h gust is just huge, especially in an opposite direction, it almost feels double. 

“It can add 20 metres onto your braking point, can cause you to lock a front wheel, sometimes just lose all downforce and stall the floor altogether at some point. 

“So yeah, it's difficult for those out there, and it's definitely one you've got to manage.”

Managing the wind is different in F2 cars because teams do not have the same wide window of set-up options to mitigate the impact of the wind. 

In addition, F2 cars follow the ground effect style of the current generation of F1 cars, which are inherently more susceptible to wind because they’re so dependent on the airflow under the car, which unpredictable wind coming from all directions will impact. 

All of that made a very windy Baku weekend the toughest challenge faced by the F2 drivers this season.