Arvid Lindblad Takes Victory, Nikola Tsolov is on the Podium for the First Time: What Happened in the Final Formula 2 Sprint?

therookiereporters
Dec 8, 2025
4 min read

Yesterday, not a person who watched the F2 Sprint could say that it was anything other than intense and rather interesting. Now, let us review what happened throughout the race.

Arvid Lindblad started from pole position, while Victor Martins started from third position behind Joshua Dürksen who was in second position. Although Leonardo Fornaroli already won the championship, he still tried his best to help his team, Invicta Racing, which is currently leading the teams’ championship. Behind Invicta, the battle for P2 between Hitech TGR and Campos Racing seems to intensify as the gap shrinks to 10 points. Behind Fornaroli, the drivers’ championship turned into a battlefield as Jak Crawford and Richard Verschoor were matching at 170 points before the Sprint. In the end, Crawford scored 3 points so he is now ahead of his rival, but this battle is nowhere near over until they reach the checkered flag in the final race.

Polesitter Arvid Lindblad was off to a good start as Joshua Dürksen managed a stay right behind him. The first lap was rather chaotic and action-filled. Right at the start, Sebastián Montoya got stuck and while Martinius Stenshorne had no space and ended up getting tossed into the air after driving over the curb in a harsh manner, seeing him falling back to last place. Meanwhile, Dino Becanovic, after getting past Montoya, forced Victor Martins off the track, but was not penalised since the stewards deemed the position was his. With this included, Martins lost 3 positions after starting from third place.

Around halfway through the Sprint, the car of John Bennett was seen in a large cloud of smoke, likely caused by an engine failure, because of which he was not able to finish his race. As the car was taken off the track, there was a yellow flag and a Virtual Safety Car period which seemed like a good opportunity for Dürksen to try to catch and overtake Lindblad. The soon-to-be VCARB driver executed an ideal restart, yet not good enough to put Dürksen far enough, but the AIX Racing driver, as it seemed, accelerated too harshly and almost hit the car of Lindblad from behind, so he had to turn suddenly to avoid the collision, putting a 1.5 second gap between him and Lindblad, making it a much bigger challenge to overtake his rival.

Meanwhile, Rafael Villagómez forced Luke Browning off the track, but managed to overtake only in the next turn, so there was no penalty issued to the Mexican.

An intense battle took place between Jak Crawford and Gabriele Minì. Crawford overtook the Alpine junior, but in the next turn, Minì tried to take his position back in such a fierce manner that his car was momentarily thrown into the air after driving onto the curb.

Dino Beganovic caught up to Oliver Goethe and actively tried to go past him, but once he got the chance to overtake, he braked too late. Luckily for Beganovic, he could still take the turn without going off-track and keep his position ahead of Goethe.

Minì, previously overtaken by Crawford, this time got attacked from behind by none other than Roman Staněk. The Czech succeeded in overtaking Minì, but lost his position as the Italian took back his position ahead of Staněk, who was surprised by his own teammate, as Fornaroli tried to get past him, but defended well against the reigning champion of Formula 2.

As these battles rage on, Crawford caught up to Martins and aggressively tried to overtake him, turning slightly into the Frenchman and losing his own front wing endplate, yet still successfully passing him, obviously having more pace. A very short virtual safety car period was introduced while the endplate of Crawford was collected.

Ahead of the final lap, Dürksen caught up to Lindblad, closing the gap to only 0.6 seconds, but that was still not close enough for an overtake, so as the checkered flag waved them down, they passed in the same order as the one they started the Sprint in. Just behind them, in third place, Nikola Tsolov clinched his first F2 podium, as he first raced in this category last weekend, in Qatar, where an unfortunate incident caused him to fall back several positions in the last few laps.

A rather exciting race took place this weekend in Abu Dhabi, the championships, both for the drivers and teams, become more tense as we head into the final Race under the lights of the Yas Island track.

Final results:

P1: Arvid Lindblad

P2: Joshua Dürksen

P3: Nikola Tsolov

P4: Dino Beganovic

P5: Oliver Goethe

P6: Jak Crawford

P7: Victor Martins

P8: Alexander Dunne

P9: Gabriele Minì

P10: Roman Staněk

P11: Leonardo Fornaroli