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  2019 Spa-Francorchamps Formula 2 round

Round details
Round 9 of 12 in the 2019 FIA Formula 2 Championship.
Layout of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Location	Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Stavelot, Belgium
Course	Permanent racing facility 7.004 km (4.352 mi)
Feature race
Date 31 August 2019 Laps 25 Pole position Driver Nyck de Vries ART Grand Prix Time 1:58.304 Podium First Nyck De Vries ART Grand Prix Second Louis Delétraz Carlin Third Jack Aitken Campos Racing Fastest lap Driver None None Time NC
Sprint race
Date 1 September 2019 Laps 18 Podium First Race Cancelled N/A Second Race Cancelled N/A Third Race Cancelled N/A Fastest lap Driver Race Cancelled N/A Time NC

The 2019 Spa-Francorchamps FIA Formula 2 round was to have been a pair of motor races that were due to be held on 31 August and 1 September 2019 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Stavelot, Belgium as part of the FIA Formula 2 Championship. It was to be the ninth round of the 2019 FIA Formula 2 Championship and run in support of the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix.

The feature race was abandoned after an accident involving Anthoine Hubert, Juan Manuel Correa and Giuliano Alesi. Hubert and Correa were taken to the circuit's medical centre where Hubert died of his injuries. Correa was stabilised and transferred to a nearby hospital. The sprint race was cancelled as a mark of respect.

Report

Championship standings before the round

ART Grand Prix driver Nyck de Vries entered the round with a thirty point lead over Nicholas Latifi in the drivers' championship. Sérgio Sette Câmara was third, a further twenty-five points behind. In the teams' championship, DAMS started the round with a sixty-five point lead over UNI-Virtuosi Racing, and ART Grand Prix a further thirty-six points behind in third.

Driver changes

Twenty drivers representing ten teams were entered into the event. Nineteen of the drivers who contested the previous round in Hungary returned for the Spa-Francorchamps round. The only exception was Campos Racing driver Arjun Maini, who left the team. Campos signed Euroformula Open championship leader Marino Sato to replace Maini prior to the round.

Qualifying

Nyck de Vries qualified on pole position, his third of the season. Sérgio Sette Câmara was second, a quarter of a second behind de Vries, but de Vries' championship rival Nicholas Latifi was only able to qualify in eleventh when a red flag interrupted his final flying lap. Latifi was later promoted to tenth on the grid by way of a three-place penalty awarded to Jordan King for ignoring yellow flags.

Feature race accident

A sequence of collisions involving multiple cars at the Raidillon corner stopped the feature race in its second lap. Trident driver Giuliano Alesi was running tenth when he spun into the barriers while going through Eau Rouge, damaging the rear of the car and bouncing back onto the circuit at the exit of the corner. Ralph Boschung, Anthoine Hubert and Jordan King had been running eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth at the time and took evasive action. Boschung cleared Alesi's Trident by taking to the tarmac run-off on the outside of the corner and King was able to slow in time to avoid contact. Hubert attempted to go to the right of Boschung, but made contact with the Trident's right-rear wheel, puncturing Boschung's tyre and causing Hubert to lose his front wing. Hubert's car continued along the run-off and crashed into a tyre barrier with the front and right side of the car. The car snapped around and was sitting at an angle that was perpendicular to the racing line, but it remained on the tarmac run-off area.

Juan Manuel Correa, who had been fourteenth at the time, was on the approach to Eau Rouge as Alesi lost control. He hit a piece of debris which lodged under a front wheel, preventing his car from steering effectively and causing it to go straight into the tarmac run-off. Correa hit Hubert at right angles, his Charouz hitting Hubert's BWT Arden in the left side of the car. Correa was estimated to be travelling at 257 km/h (159.7 mph) at the time of the impact. The force of the collision was enough to tear Hubert's car in half, his headrest being ejected in the process. The front assembly of Correa's car broke away, exposing his feet; Correa's car also rolled over. Hubert's Arden pivoted around and hit the tyre barrier again, and came to a rest with its front wing and rear assembly up against the barriers while Correa's Charouz continued travelling several metres further along the circuit and came to rest upside-down on the grassy verge on the opposite side of the circuit. Campos driver Marino Sato braked to a complete stop to avoid cars on track, but in so doing stalled his engine and could not continue. Alesi was similarly unharmed—the accident unfolded behind him as he continued onto the Kemmel Straight—but his contact with the wall meant that his car suffered from race-ending damage and he pulled over on the approach to Les Combes. An FIA investigation into the accident found that fifteen seconds had elapsed between Alesi's initial loss of control and the cars of Hubert and Correa coming to a halt.

The seriousness of the accident and the amount of debris littered across the circuit meant that the race was immediately red-flagged. Hubert was attended to by medical staff within one minute of the accident unfolding. He and Correa were extracted from their cars and rushed to the circuit's medical centre. Hubert died of his injuries eighty-three minutes after the accident while Correa was stabilised and transferred to a hospital in Liège. He was admitted to intensive care and diagnosed with a spinal injury and fractured legs. He was reported to be conscious and lucid before undergoing surgery. His injuries ruled him out of competing for the remainder of the season. Correa was transferred to a specialist facility in the UK where he entered acute respiratory failure brought about by acute respiratory distress syndrome. His condition was downgraded to critical, but stable, but he was placed in a medically-induced coma on 7 September. Correa was brought out of the coma on 20 September, and underwent surgery to save his lower right leg. The reconstructive surgery was largely deemed a success. Correa's long-term prognosis called for up to a year of rehabilitation.

The feature race was not restarted and no result was issued, as per FIA regulations, as the leader had only completed one lap so the race was abandoned. The sprint race that had been planned for the following morning was cancelled after Hubert's death was announced. Hubert's death was the first fatality for a driver competing in the second tier of FIA-sanctioned formula racing since Henry Surtees' accident in the 2009 FIA Formula Two Championship.

Response

A manslaughter inquiry was opened by the Verviers prosecutor's office on 2 September; a number of auto racing and road safety experts have been employed as advisers. The car driven by Giuliano Alesi was impounded by the authorities as part of the investigation, forcing Trident Racing to enter a single car at the following round in Monza one week after the Spa-Francorchamps round. The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the international governing body of motorsport, launched their own investigation into the accident. Hubert and Correa's cars were provided to the FIA to allow their forensic investigation to begin in earnest. The final report was published in February 2020 and concluded that there was no single contributing factor to the accident. It stated that previous contact with another car had caused Alesi to lose pressure in his rear tyre, setting off a chain reaction of events. The report also concluded that Hubert had taken every reasonable measure to avoid the initial contact and that his death was not the result of a driver error.

BWT Arden announced that they would only enter one car for Hubert's team-mate Tatiana Calderón at the Monza round. The team went on to prepare a car for Hubert, which was then left in the garage as a mark of respect. Artem Markelov was named as Hubert's replacement for the final two rounds of the championship in Sochi and Abu Dhabi. Hubert's racing number, #19, was retired and Markelov assigned #22. Matevos Isaakyan replaced the injured Correa at Charouz for the final races. Hubert's number was permanently retired in 2020.

Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo admitted that he had given serious thought to withdrawing from the Belgian Grand Prix that took place the next day, and offered the opinion that other drivers had also considered it. Race winner Charles Leclerc, long time friend of Hubert, dedicated the victory to him. Organisers of the Formula 2 Championship introduced an award for the best rookie driver, which was named in Hubert's honour.

The managers of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps announced that a planned redesign of the Raidillon run-off area that had been scheduled for 2022 would be brought forward. The redesign had been scheduled to be introduced to allow the circuit to host a round of the FIM Endurance World Championship. The proposal called for the addition of a gravel trap to make the circuit suitable for motorcycle racing events sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), the international governing body of motorcycle racing. The managers argued that the gravel trap would benefit racing cars by arresting their speed when they left the circuit.

Classification

Qualifying

Pos.	No.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Grid
1	4	Nyck de Vries	ART Grand Prix	1:58.304	–	1
2	5	Sérgio Sette Câmara	DAMS	1:58.576	+0.272	2
3	15	Jack Aitken	Campos Racing	1:58.785	+0.481	3
4	2	Nobuharu Matsushita	Carlin	1:58.832	+0.528	4
5	1	Louis Delétraz	Carlin	1:58.910	+0.606	5
6	9	Mick Schumacher	Prema Racing	1:59.141	+0.837	6
7	3	Nikita Mazepin	ART Grand Prix	1:59.142	+0.838	7
8	16	Jordan King	MP Motorsport	1:59.366	+1.062	11
9	7	Guanyu Zhou	UNI-Virtuosi	1:59.425	+1.121	8
10	8	Luca Ghiotto	UNI-Virtuosi	1:59.641	+1.310	9
11	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1:59.717	+1.443	10
12	20	Giuliano Alesi	Trident	1:59.961	+1.657	12
13	19	Anthoine Hubert	BWT Arden	2.00.005	+1.701	13
14	21	Ralph Boschung	Trident	2:00.030	+1.716	14
15	12	Juan Manuel Correa	Sauber Junior Team by Charouz	2:00.250	+1.936	15
16	10	Sean Gelael	Prema Racing	2:00.327	+2.023	16
17	14	Marino Sato	Campos Racing	2:01.185	+2.881	17
18	17	Mahaveer Raghunathan	MP Motorsport	2:01.226	+2.922	19
19	18	Tatiana Calderón	BWT Arden	2:03.224	+4.920	18
107% time: 2:06.585
–	11	Callum Ilott	Sauber Junior Team by Charouz	no time	–	20
Source:

• ^1 – Jordan King and Mahaveer Raghunathan were both given a three-place grid penalty for failing to slow under yellow flags. Both drivers also had two penalty points added to their racing licences.
• ^2 – Callum Ilott failed to set a lap time, but was given permission by the stewards to start the race.

Championship standings after the round

Drivers' Championship standings Pos. Driver Points 1 Nyck de Vries 200 2 Nicholas Latifi 166 3 Sérgio Sette Câmara 141 4 Luca Ghiotto 135 5 Jack Aitken 134

Teams' Championship standings Pos. Team Points 1 DAMS 307 2 UNI-Virtuosi 242 3 ART Grand Prix 202 4 Campos Racing 164 5 Carlin 145

See also

• 2019 Belgian Grand Prix
• 2019 Spa-Francorchamps Formula 3 round

References

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3. ^ Herrero, Daniel (1 September 2019). "Correa suffers spinal injury, fractured legs in Spa crash". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
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13. "Serious accident for Juan Manuel Correa during race today". jmcorrea.com. 31 August 2019. Archived from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
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15. Coch, Mat (7 September 2019). "Correa in 'induced state of unconsciousness' after UK transfer". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 8 September 2019.
16. "Anthoine Hubert: Formula 2 driver Juan Manuel Correa critical but stable in induced coma". 7 September 2019. Retrieved 8 September 2019.
17. Coch, Mat (20 September 2019). "Correa 'fragile' despite being taken out of coma". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
18. Coch, Mat (29 September 2019). "Injured F2 driver to undergo surgery". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
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22. Larkam, Lewis (4 September 2019). "Trident to run one car at Monza due to Hubert crash investigation". crash.net. Crash Media Group. Retrieved 4 September 2019.
23. "Statement: Incident during FIA Formula 2 Feature Race, Spa-Francorchamps". fia.com. Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 31 August 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
24. Benyon, Jack. "FIA begins investigation into Hubert, Correa crashed Spa F2 cars". autosport.com. Motorsport Network. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
25. Benyon, Jack (1 September 2019). "Arden to run only one Formula 2 car at Monza for Calderon". autosport.com. Motorsport Network. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
26. Allen, Peter (24 September 2019). "Arden signs Markelov to take Hubert's place in F2 line-up". formulascout.com. Formula Scout. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
27. Costa, Massimo (17 September 2019). "Isaakyan a Sochi e Yas Marina, debutto in F2 con Sauber by Charouz" [Isaakyan debuts in F2 for Sauber by Charouz in Sochi and Yas Marina]. italiaracing.net (in Italian). Inpagina. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
28. "Tod von Anthoine Hubert Formel 2 ohne Nummer 19" [Formula 2 withdraws number 19 for Anthoine Hubert]. speedweek.com (in German). Speedweek Ltd. 9 January 2020. Archived from the original on 9 January 2020. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
29. Herrero, Daniel (2 September 2019). "Ricciardo thought about not racing after Hubert's death". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
30. Smale, Simon (2 September 2019). "Daniel Ricciardo glad to put tough Spa Grand Prix weekend behind him as F1 mourns Anthoine Hubert". abc.net.au. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
31. Herrero, Daniel (2 September 2019). "Leclerc 'can't fully enjoy' first F1 victory". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
32. Benyon, Jack. "Zhou wins new Anthoine Hubert F2 rookie of the year award". Autosport.com.
33. Herrero, Daniel (5 September 2019). "Spa aiming to finalise gravel trap design this year". speedcafe.com. Speedcafe. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
34. ^ Gillard, Aaron (30 August 2019). "MP F2 duo handed grid penalty for Spa; Raghunathan edges closer to second ban". thecheckeredflag.co.uk. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.

External links

• Official website

• Belgium
• Sports

• 2019 Formula 2 Championship
• 2019 in Belgian motorsport
• August 2019 sports events in Belgium
• September 2019 sports events in Belgium
• Cancelled motorsport events
• Auto racing controversies