Podium For Jehan Daruvala At 2022 F2’s Season-opening Sprint Race

Prema Racing’s Jehan Daruvala had a strong opening account for the 2022 FIA Formula 2 World Championship, finishing second like in 2021, at the season-opening Sprint Race at Bahrain. His teammate and fellow Red Bull junior driver, Dennis Hauger has a decent recovery drive to ninth position after starting 15th on the grid.

Starting in fourth position for the sprint race, Daruvala managed to move one place up to third position at the end of lap 1. For most of the 23-lap sprint race, it was more of a waiting game for the tyre wear to kick in, and on lap 16 of 23, Daruala made his move on Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung for second place.

Immediately after that, the virtual safety car came out, and when it ended, Boschung retook second place from Daruvala. But the Indian driver swapped places a lap later. Unfortunately, that late race virtual safety car period did cost Daruvala a potential shot at the win as the Indian driver finished less than 2 seconds behind the race winner, Richard Verschoor of Trident.

While it's a good start to Jehan Daruvala’s 2022 F2 campaign, the Indian driver will need to make up ground for the 32-lap/173-km feature race. He’ll be lining up seventh on the grid due to qualifying results deciding the grid order.  

The final race of the opening round of the 2022 F2 season will commence at 4:10pm (IST).