The two French drivers competing in Formula 2 at the 81^st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco, Victor Martins (ART Grand Prix) and Isack Hadjar (Campos Racing), shone in Thursday’s free practice session, which was run on rain tyres on the Circuit de Monaco’s sodden track in very poor visibility conditions.

The wet session, which got underway shortly after 3pm, saw Martins set his fastest lap of 1:39.237. A good start for a potential renaissance, after suffering a very tough start of the season, scoring 9 points only in 8 races.

This very decent time put Martins at the top of the time sheet, 6 tenths of a second ahead of Norway’s Dennis Hauger (MP Motorsport). Dutchman Richard Verschoor (Trident) had to make do with third place, half a second ahead of Hadjar, when the track was still in decent condition.

After eight races in 2024, the provisional leader of the FIA Formula 2 Championship is Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport), a native of Barbados who dreams of a future like that of Lewis Hamilton, the 7-time world champion who also hails from the West Indies. As for 17-year-old Italian prodigy Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli, backed by Mercedes, he managed to finish 8^th in this wet session, for his debut at Monaco.

Maloney leads the provisional overall standings ahead of Estonian Paul Aron (HiTech), 9^th in this session, and Hadjar, the real man in form at the moment: the young Frenchman has just collected 50 points in the last two Feature Races, on Sunday morning in Melbourne and Imola.

Qualifying gets underway on Friday at 3.10pm, in two groups of 11 drivers. Anything is possible for pole position.

Practice session classification

Photo © Formula 2