JOHN BENNETT BATTLES FORWARD ON MAIDEN BAKU FIA FORMULA 2 VISIT

Rising British motorsport star John Bennett came close to a points finish as he battled through a bruising Baku weekend in the FIA Formula 2 Championship (20/21 September).

The Salisbury-based youngster took to the tight and twisty street circuit in the Azerbaijan capital for the first time on Friday morning. He quickly adapted to his new environment in practice, finishing well within the pace of his more experienced rivals.

Bennett, who is backed by partners Pangea Insurance, StreetSharp Ltd, Lonetree Limited, Lewco Holdings Limited and FIS Facades, took his newfound knowledge into the key qualifying session later that afternoon. He was hopeful of challenging for a top ten berth to put himself in the mix for the championship's reverse grid format.

With one final run on fresh tyres after a red flag scenario, Bennett was not far from the pace required to achieve that feat. His session was subsequently destroyed however, when Roman Stanek emerged from an escape road straight into the path of the innocent Bennett, who thankfully walked away from his damaged Van Amersfoort Racing chassis unharmed.

It meant the reigning GB3 Championship vice-champion would start from 13th on the grid for the sprint race the following day, hopeful of adding to the points finish he scored in the recent round at Monza in Italy.

A relatively quiet race saw Bennett involved in an early scrap with the ART entry of Ritomo Miyata, crucially remaining out of trouble during the tight contest. He kept the nose of car #24 clean throughout, and was rewarded with a 13th place finish by the race's conclusion ahead of an intriguing feature race the next day.

After a turbulent first lap where he dropped to the rear of the field in the squabbling pack, Bennett was gifted another chance by an early safety car period. He quickly moved ahead of Luke Browning and Cian Shields, before continuing what was becoming a sterling recovery drive by disposing of both Amaury Cordeel and Laurens Van Hoepen.

Another moment ahead of him for Alex Dunne aided his comeback trail even further, with a late move on Victor Martins ultimately sealing his eventual finishing position of 14th at the chequered flag.

John Bennett: "It was a bit of a crazy weekend, but you go into a circuit like Baku knowing that literally anything could happen in this form of racing!

"It was disappointing how qualifying ended. It was a big hit out of our control that led to a lot of damage, which meant that we didn't see if we could improve our lap, but also gave us a lot of work to do in the races.

"The races were both a bit up and down for us, losing out initially in some pretty tight starts before making up ground. The second race in particular was a case of recovery after lap one, but it turned out well in terms of our pace and we could have definitely come away with more in that one.

"We're looking forward to now returning to two circuits I already have F2 experience at, starting with Qatar. We had an amazing result there last year, so hopefully more of the same this time around!"

The next two FIA Formula 2 Championship races take place in two months' time (28-30 November) as Qatar hosts the penultimate round of the season.

Images from James Gasperotti.