Ferrari junior Leclerc wins F2 finale with a stellar last lap move
Ferrari Formula 1 junior Charles Leclerc claimed a stunning final Formula 2 victory as he passed Alexander Albon with a dramatic last lap move in the Abu Dhabi sprint race
Albon had led the 22-lap race up until the final tour, but Leclerc attacked him aggressively at the Turn 7 hairpin.
The pair touched at the slow corner but Leclerc backed off before attacking again on the following straight, squeezing through on the inside on the run to Turn 8 as Albon defended fiercely.
But Leclerc got by to take a seventh F2 win in his rookie title-winning season by 1.2 seconds over Albon, with DAMS driver Nicholas Latifi completing the podium.
At the start, polesitter Jordan King was slow away, as Albon and Nobuharu Matsushita shot by from second and third.
Matsushita attacked his team-mate at Turn 1, but got pinched against the apex and had to back off, which allowed Latifi to sweep in second as King was shuffled down to sixth behind the fast-starting Leclerc.
Leclerc and King swapped places on the opening tour as Albon consolidated his lead over Latifi, careful to nip clear of the 1s DRS detection range.
Albon continued to preserve that gap while Leclerc was bottled up behind King, the Prema Racing driver eventually getting past the Briton on lap four.
Leclerc initially made little progress to catch the leaders - the quartet up front completed by McLaren junior Nyck de Vries - before he began to home in heading towards the middle part of the race.
He caught and passed de Vries with a textbook DRS-move heading into Turn 8 and then set about catching and dispatching Matsushita and Latifi before setting up the final lap action with Albon.
The final tour showdown was set up by yellow flags - necessitated by Louis Deletraz and the fading de Vries clashing at Turn 13 and the Rapax driver pulling off one corner later - preventing Leclerc from passing into Turn 11 or using DRS at the Yas Marina track's two activation points.
But in the end, he forced his way by, with Matsushita following the top three home ahead of Luca Ghiotto and Artem Markelov in fifth and sixth - a result that clinches the 2017 F2 teams' title for the Russian Time squad.
Oliver Rowland put in a sensational charge from last on the grid to make the points in seventh after losing his feature race win due to a technical infringement.
The Renault F1 development driver rose from 20th to 13th on the first lap and then put in a series of breath-taking passes before getting stuck behind Markelov.
Sergio Sette Camara scored the final point ahead of de Vries and Roberto Merhi.
Lando Norris battled his way to 13th - picking up a five-second penalty during his duels with Sean Gelael and Santino Ferrucci, who were 14th and 15th respectively.
King was the other retirement, stopping in the pits a few laps after picking up a puncture when Markelov clipped his left-rear tyre as they fought over seventh.
Race two result
Pos | Driver | Team | Laps | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Charles Leclerc | Prema Racing | 22 | 41m36.188s |
2 | Alexander Albon | ART Grand Prix | 22 | 1.293s |
3 | Nicholas Latifi | DAMS | 22 | 3.207s |
4 | Nobuharu Matsushita | ART Grand Prix | 22 | 4.105s |
5 | Luca Ghiotto | RUSSIAN TIME | 22 | 4.952s |
6 | Artem Markelov | RUSSIAN TIME | 22 | 14.758s |
7 | Oliver Rowland | DAMS | 22 | 15.446s |
8 | Sergio Sette Camara | MP Motorsport | 22 | 24.795s |
9 | Nyck de Vries | Racing Engineering | 22 | 29.261s |
10 | Roberto Merhi | Rapax | 22 | 29.689s |
11 | Antonio Fuoco | Prema Racing | 22 | 29.912s |
12 | Alex Palou | Campos Racing | 22 | 30.999s |
13 | Lando Norris | Campos Racing | 22 | 31.564s |
14 | Sean Gelael | Pertamina Arden | 22 | 38.714s |
15 | Santino Ferrucci | Trident | 22 | 39.605s |
16 | Nabil Jeffri | Trident | 22 | 43.310s |
17 | Gustav Malja | Racing Engineering | 22 | 49.659s |
18 | Norman Nato | Pertamina Arden | 19 | 3 Laps |
- | Louis Deletraz | Rapax | 18 | Retirement |
- | Jordan King | MP Motorsport | 11 | Retirement |
Final drivers' standings
Pos | Driver | Points |
---|---|---|
1 | Charles Leclerc | 282 |
2 | Artem Markelov | 210 |
3 | Oliver Rowland | 191 |
4 | Luca Ghiotto | 185 |
5 | Nicholas Latifi | 178 |
6 | Nobuharu Matsushita | 131 |
7 | Nyck de Vries | 114 |
8 | Antonio Fuoco | 98 |
9 | Norman Nato | 91 |
10 | Alexander Albon | 86 |
11 | Jordan King | 62 |
12 | Sergio Sette Camara | 47 |
13 | Gustav Malja | 44 |
14 | Sergio Canamasas | 21 |
15 | Sean Gelael | 17 |
16 | Johnny Cecotto Jr. | 16 |
17 | Louis Deletraz | 16 |
18 | Roberto Merhi | 16 |
19 | Ralph Boschung | 11 |
20 | Sergey Sirotkin | 9 |
21 | Alex Palou | 5 |
22 | Santino Ferrucci | 4 |
23 | Nabil Jeffri | 2 |
24 | Robert Visoiu | 1 |
25 | Lando Norris | 0 |
26 | Callum Ilott | 0 |
27 | Stefano Coletti | 0 |
28 | Rene Binder | 0 |
29 | Raffaele Marciello | 0 |
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