Formula 2 (F2) headed into unknown territory for Round 11 of the 2026 season as the championship made its first visit to the Madring for the Spanish GP. With no previous competitive F2 running at the new Madrid circuit, drivers faced a steep learning curve from the moment they left the pit lane on Friday. The weekend quickly delivered plenty of drama. Nikola Tsolov topped an interrupted Free Practice, Dino Beganovic mastered a red-flag-filled Qualifying session, Ritomo Miyata secured his first F2 victory in Saturday’s Sprint Race, and Beganovic converted pole into his maiden Feature Race win on Sunday at the Spanish GP.
Madrid also had an important impact on the championship picture. Tsolov failed to score across the two races, allowing Rafael Câmara to reduce his advantage from 11 points to seven despite the Brazilian enduring difficulties of his own. Further down the standings, several drivers made major gains while others left Spain with valuable opportunities missed. With three rounds remaining in the 2026 campaign, here are the winners and losers from F2’s first visit to the Madring.
Winners of the weekend
Dino Beganovic
Dino Beganovic arrived in Madrid seventh in the championship and left the Spanish GP firmly back among the leading group after producing his strongest weekend of this F2 season. The DAMS Lucas Oil driver first made his mark during Friday’s chaotic Qualifying session. Three red flags repeatedly disrupted the field’s attempts to put together clean laps, but Beganovic delivered when it mattered. After initially setting a 1:45.182 and then improving to a 1:44.578, he found another significant gain on his final effort. His 1:44.331 put him 0.230s clear of Alex Dunne and secured his second pole position of 2026.
Saturday’s reverse-grid Sprint brought little reward as Beganovic finished P10, but Sunday presented the much bigger opportunity. Starting from pole, the Swede immediately controlled the opening run into Turn 1 and kept Dunne behind him. Two Safety Car periods complicated the Feature Race and played a major role in the pit-stop sequence, but Beganovic handled both interruptions without losing control. The second Safety Car, caused by the collision between Câmara and Oliver Goethe, allowed Beganovic and several of the other drivers who had extended their opening stints to complete their mandatory stops under favourable conditions. He emerged with the effective lead intact.
Dunne began closing during the final stages, but Beganovic responded and rebuilt his advantage. He crossed the line first to claim his maiden Formula 2 Feature Race victory and complete an impressive pole-to-win Sunday. The result transformed his championship position. Victory and the two points from pole gave Beganovic a 27-point haul from the Feature Race, lifting him to 106 points and sixth in the Drivers’ Championship. Having started the weekend outside the top six, Madrid put the DAMS driver back into a much stronger position with three rounds still to come.
Ritomo Miyata
Ritomo Miyata’s Spanish GP weekend provided the breakthrough he had been chasing throughout his F2 career. Qualifying ninth gave the Hitech driver a front-row start for Saturday’s reverse-grid Sprint alongside Emerson Fittipaldi Jr. When the lights went out, Miyata immediately capitalised. He beat Fittipaldi to the lead on the opening lap and quickly established himself at the front.
From there, the Japanese driver had to manage two Safety Car periods. He controlled both restarts and prevented Fittipaldi from mounting a serious challenge, eventually building a gap of almost three seconds in the closing stages. Miyata took the chequered flag to secure his maiden F2 victory, becoming the first Japanese driver to win in the championship since 2023. He also claimed the fastest lap, making an already significant result even more valuable.
Sunday showed that his Sprint victory was not an isolated result. From ninth on the Feature Race grid, Miyata steadily moved into contention as the different strategies unfolded. The timing of the second Safety Car helped those who had extended their opening stints, and Miyata emerged among the drivers fighting at the front after completing his mandatory stop. He ultimately brought the car home in third behind Beganovic and Dunne, adding a second podium to an already excellent weekend.
Miyata scored 26 points across the two races, moving from 44 before Madrid to 70. That haul leaves him level with Martinius Stenshorne in the standings and represents a significant step forward after a campaign in which strong performances had not always produced major results.
Emerson Fittipaldi Jr.
Emerson Fittipaldi Jr. arrived in Madrid with only 10 championship points. By the end of the weekend, he had almost tripled that total. The AIX Racing driver qualified P10 on Friday, which proved especially valuable under F2’s reverse-grid Sprint format. It placed him on pole for Saturday, alongside Miyata on the front row.
Miyata found a way past at the beginning of the Sprint, but Fittipaldi refused to let second place slip away. He stayed within reach of the Hitech driver during the opening phase and then faced increasing pressure from Laurens van Hoepen after the second Safety Car restart. Van Hoepen had DRS in the closing laps, but Fittipaldi absorbed the pressure and held onto P2. The result gave the Brazilian his first F2 podium and his biggest points haul of the season up to that point.
He backed it up on Sunday rather than falling back into the midfield. Fittipaldi ran inside the leading group after the final pit-stop sequence and spent the closing stages defending fourth place from Joshua Dürksen. The Invicta driver eventually passed him shortly before the finish, but Fittipaldi still crossed the line fifth and collected another 10 points. His 18 points across the weekend lifted him from 10 to 28 in the championship and up to 17th in the standings. More importantly, two competitive races at a completely new circuit provided a much-needed breakthrough after a difficult season.
Losers of the weekend
Nikola Tsolov
Madrid began with Nikola Tsolov looking every bit like the championship leader. It ended with his advantage at the top reduced and no additional points added to his total. Tsolov started strongly by topping Free Practice with a 1:47.059 in a heavily interrupted session. He could not quite repeat that form in Qualifying but still secured P5, leaving himself well placed for both races. Saturday’s Sprint Race proved costly. Tsolov spent much of the race in a tightly packed group behind Campos Racing teammate Noel León. After briefly passing León off-track and returning the position, he clipped the wall and spun one lap later, forcing him to retire and triggering the second Safety Car.
With Rafael Câmara finishing sixth, the damage to Tsolov’s championship lead remained limited heading into Sunday. However, the Feature Race brought another difficult afternoon. Starting on the hard tyre, Tsolov initially ran around the lower end of the points positions. After his mandatory pit stop, his race began to unravel. Roman Bilinski moved ahead before Mari Boya, León and Laurens van Hoepen also passed him in the closing stages as Tsolov struggled for pace. He eventually finished P18, leaving Madrid without scoring a single point.
Tsolov remains the F2 championship leader on 177 points, but Câmara has reduced the gap from 11 points to seven despite receiving a 10-second penalty in the Feature Race. It marked Tsolov’s first completely scoreless weekend since taking control of the championship, tightening the title fight ahead of Baku.
Kush Maini
Madrid offered several opportunities for Kush Maini to recover from a difficult Monza weekend, but almost everything that could go wrong for the ART Grand Prix driver did. There were signs of promise in Free Practice. Maini briefly headed the field before the red flag and later appeared to set the fastest time of the session, although officials deleted that final lap. He therefore ended Practice down in P13 despite showing considerably stronger pace than the result suggested.
His Qualifying session then unravelled almost immediately. Maini was involved in the first red-flag stoppage and ultimately failed to record a classified lap time. The Stewards later deleted his fastest time after holding him responsible for causing a red flag, leaving him at the back of the order for the races. Things became worse at the start of Saturday’s Sprint. Maini made contact with Nico Varrone on the opening lap, causing race-ending damage for both drivers. The Stewards found Maini wholly responsible for the collision and issued a penalty which became a five-place grid drop for Sunday because he could not serve it during the Sprint.
His Feature Race lasted only a handful of laps. Maini and Cian Shields made contact before the ART driver hit the barriers and retired. The Stewards later penalised Shields for causing that collision, but it made little difference to Maini’s weekend. He left Madrid without scoring and remains on 88 points. Dürksen’s fourth place on Sunday moved the Paraguayan ahead of him into seventh in the Drivers’ Championship, dropping Maini to eighth. After also failing to score at Monza, the ART driver has now seen several rivals close in or move ahead during a crucial stage of the season.
Gabriele Minì
Gabriele Minì did at least leave Madrid with points, but the Spanish GP still represented another difficult weekend for a driver who had been one of Tsolov’s closest championship challengers only a few F2 rounds earlier. Qualifying immediately left Minì on the back foot. While Beganovic, Dunne and Câmara secured the first three positions, the MP Motorsport driver could manage only P14 around the Madring.
He made some progress during Saturday’s Sprint and reached P9, but with points only available to the top eight, he finished just outside the scoring positions. That became particularly frustrating when Tsolov retired, as Minì missed the chance to make a meaningful reduction to the championship leader’s advantage. Sunday went better. Minì worked his way forward from the midfield and fought Miyata during the opening part of the Feature Race. He eventually climbed to P7 and collected six points, limiting the damage from an otherwise underwhelming weekend.
However, the F2 championship picture around him changed substantially after the Spanish GP. Minì moved from 147 to 153 points, but Dunne’s second place and fastest lap brought the Rodin Motorsport driver to 139. The gap between them has therefore fallen to just 14 points. Beganovic also moved closer after his victory, climbing to sixth on 106. Minì remains third and actually reduced his deficit to championship leader Tsolov to 24 points, so Madrid was far from a complete disaster. Yet with Câmara seven points from the lead and Dunne rapidly approaching from behind, six points from the Spanish GP left the Italian with considerably less breathing room heading into the final three rounds.
