Nato takes F2 sprint race win after Leclerc penalty in Baku
Prema Racing’s Charles Leclerc was denied the chance of a double win in Baku after a late ten second penalty which gifted Norman Nato his first Formula 2 victory of the season.
Sergio Sette Camara’s feature race penalty saw Ralph Boschung start on reverse grid pole for Campos, but the Swiss driver was unable to hold the lead for longer than two turns.
DAMS driver Oliver Rowland took first from Boschung having started alongside the poleman, while a poor start for fellow Brit Jordan King saw him drop from third to fifth.
Nato then passed Boschung with an extremely late lunge into the 90-degree left-hander at turn two, breaking a small segment of his front wing in the process.
A relatively incident-free first five laps saw extremely close battling up and down the top eight, with Markelov, Sirotkin and Leclerc swapping positions frequently down the home straight.
Nyck De Vries battled from seventh on the grid to fourth by the end of lap five, before overtaking Canada’s Nicholas Latifi for third just one lap later.
Drama followed onto lap eight, as a gearbox failure for leader Rowland robbed him of a chance at victory, gifting Arden’s Norman Nato the lead.
The mechanical issue topped off a hugely cruel weekend for the Yorkshireman having suffered what he called a “stupid penalty” in Saturday’s feature race.
De Vries then threw away what looked to be a guaranteed podium as he took the escape road route into the third turn, before stalling the car and eventually retiring.
Meanwhile, championship leader Charles Leclerc managed to carve his way through the order thanks to De Vries and Rowland’s retirements, as well as impressive overtakes on Markelov and Sirotkin.
The Monegasque driver then passed King and Latifi to take second position with seven laps to go.
Leclerc was greeted with the challenge of closing a six second gap to the leader Norman Nato but, thanks to a series of fastest laps, closed in on the Arden car with three laps to spare.
However, a ten-second penalty for the Prema Racing driver for failing to slow under yellow flags rendered his pass on the leader irrelevant and, despite crossing the line first, it was Nato who was given the win.
Leclerc took second place after being penalised with Nicholas Latifi rounding out the podium, 11.574 seconds off the eventual winner.
Jordan King took fourth for MP Motorsport ahead of Russian pairing Sergey Sirotkin and Artem Markelov.
Nobaharu Matsushita in the second ART machine finished in seventh ahead of Italy’s Luca Ghiotto in the Russian Time car.
Had Charles Leclerc won, he would have followed in the footsteps of the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and last year’s GP2 runner-up Antonio Giovinazzi in claiming a rare double victory across a race weekend.