Jehan Daruvala Makes It Two Podiums And Leads C’ship

 

It was another podium finish for Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala, finishing 3rd in the chaotic Sprint Race 2 to take the lead of the 2021 FIA Formula 2 World Championship drivers standings. His teammate, Dan Ticktum’s luck didn’t get any better after being taken out of the race on the first lap itself.

 

Starting 9th for the second 23-lap sprint race (reverse grid starting order on results based on race one), a chaotic start saw Daruvala drop to 12th. But he slowly made his way up the field, and was already up to 10th by the halfway point of the race. 

As the race seemed to have reached a stalemate, the safety car being deployed on Lap 15 completely turned it on its head. Daruvala was amongst plenty other drivers who utilised this opportunity to pit for a fresh set of soft tyres, and was set for a 5-lap sprint to the chequered flag.

Daruvala began to scythe through the field pretty quickly and in no time was already up to 4th position, but he ran out of laps to have a run at Guanyu Zhou for third in the end. Fortunately, there was some good luck on Daruvala’s side to offset his tough start to the race. Chirstian Lundgaard who had finished 2nd on the road, was handed a 10-second time penalty for an incident mid-race, and thus promoted Daruvala to third, and his second podium of the season. 

Daruvala’s strong start to the season and some luck on his side, currently puts him in the lead of the driver’s standings by a single point to Oscar Piastri. That being said, there’s still the 32-lap feature race remaining on Sunday, in which Daruvala will be 6th on the grid.  

Can Jehan Daruvala make it three-for-three podiums with the third one finally being the race win? All that will be revealed once the feature race commences at 4:20pm (IST).