JOHN BENNETT LAUNCHES 2026 FIA FORMULA 2 SEASON IN AUSTRALIA

John Bennett kicked off a new season of FIA Formula 2 Championship competition this past weekend (06-08 March), enjoying his first race action with Trident Motorsport alongside the Formula 1 season opener in Melbourne, Australia.

The Salisbury-based racer christened his second full season in the Formula 1 feeder series with a trip to the legendary Albert Park street circuit. Recent pre-season testing meant Bennett headed down under in optimistic mood, having displayed top-five pace throughout the on-track running in Spain last month.

Once action got underway as early as Friday morning in Melbourne, the pace was as hot as the circuit itself as Bennett - backed by Lonetree Limited - bedded himself into the F2 machine across free practice. Qualifying was the more important matter of the opening day, deciding the grids for the weekend's two races in front of the F1 paddock's eyes.

The quickfire timed session chopped and changed across the half-hour, with Bennett lowering his best effort to a time of 1m30.239s. He would be only 0.7s off a pole-clinching time for Saturday's sprint race, instead starting from the ninth row of the grid in his Trident Motorsport machine.

In front of over 130,000 fans flocking to Albert Park for Saturday's action, Bennett put his full focus towards climbing the order in the 23-lap race that afternoon. A great initial start was unfortunately negated somewhat when his #25 car was eased offline at the narrow opening chicane, costing him two spots from his grid position.

Dispatching Sebastian Montoya early on and evading a spinning rival, a mid-race safety car allowed him to return to his original starting spot, and then he began to push forward on the restart. Bennett expertly avoiding a spinning car ahead of him in a big fight between those from 11th down to 17th, coming out of the other side in 15th place.

Bennett eyed a charge through the field in Sunday's longer feature race. He was once again shown space on the outside heading into the first corner, but a pair of cars drifting wide blocked his exit and slowed his progress heading down the second straight heading to Turn 3. It left him three spots worse off, but incidents ahead undid the damage as he returned to 17th while the safety car emerged to clear the mess.

After the restart, Bennett - using the Supersoft Pirelli tyre compound - decided to head for his mandatory pitstop on lap seven of the race. A clean stop from the Trident mechanics helped his cause, jumping two rivals and closing in on Gabriele Mini ahead of him in the process.

Another safety car bunched the field back up, with time penalties also being applied to others around the British driver who restarted in an improved position of 14th with 10 laps to run. Bennett found himself locked in an intense battle with the trio of Cian Shields, Rafael Villagomez and Roman Billinski, easing by Shields at Turn 2 for 13th spot on his Soft tyres. Unfortunately, just as it looked like a strong result was coming his way, tyre performance evaporated in the final five laps - cruelly dropping him to an uncharacteristic 18th at the chequered flag.

John Bennett: "It's good to be back racing again, this time with a new team in Trident and they've welcomed me very well into the operation for the new season. Racing in Australia is always a pleasure, so it's a great circuit to start the season at.

"We showed good performance during testing so we came here hoping for some solid results to kick off the year. Qualifying was close, but we were in the pack and got squeezed out at the start in both races which meant having to fight back.

"The result on Sunday definitely looked like it was going to be a much better one for a while. We had made up a lot of places and a clean pit stop got us up into the battle for the last few points, but then just as we were clearing some of the traffic, the performance dropped off. It's great to see real pace in the car, and it shows that with a good qualifying, we'll be able to fight for positive results this season."

Images from Dutch Photo Agency.