John Bennett Is Best Of British In Home FIA Formula 2 Weekend At Silverstone

John Bennett was the best of the British contingent during the FIA Formula 2 Championship's visit to Silverstone, competing in front of a packed home crowd alongside the F1 British Grand Prix.

The Salisbury-based racer was full of confidence heading into his home event at the famous Northamptonshire circuit, after scoring a sensational maiden F2 race victory last time out in Spielberg to continue his strong momentum from recent rounds.

Bennett, racing for the Trident squad, would be in action in front of over 500,000 fans across the three-day event. He used the platform to continue his support for Great Ormond Street Hospital, running their logo on the side of his #25 car.

When attention turned to the timesheets, Bennett looked to be putting his circuit knowledge from Ginetta and GB3 racing to good use in free practice, sitting right on the pace and inside the top eight heading into qualifying. The session that followed was intensely close, with Bennett finishing an unrepresentative 18th on the grid for the weekend's two races - despite being less than two tenths of a second from pole position for the first of those.

Race day dawned on Saturday with the shorter sprint race, but it didn't last long for Bennett - through no fault of his own. The British driver initially gained places before being caught off guard when Colton Herta slowed in front of both Sebastian Montoya and Bennett exiting the club chicane. With nowhere to go, he had to take to the gravel trap in avoidance, and contact led to retirement.

The longer feature race on Sunday was a very different story, as Bennett made up seven places in a strategic contest. After a much calmer opening few laps, Bennett settled into the race on his hard compound Pirelli tyres, hoping for a safety car during his longer run to mix up the latter stages. He emerged from his late pitstop with fresher tyres in a fiery mood, instantly setting the fastest lap of the race at the time and passing his Trident team-mate Laurens Van Hoepen.

He made further progress, moving up from 18th place upon exiting the pits to an impressive 11th by the chequered flag, once again showing his strength in tyre management and finishing as the best of the British drivers.

John Bennett: "We've been putting together the type of performances we've wanted in recent rounds, so we came to our home race in great spirit and excited to see what we could achieve in front of these fans. It was a disappointing result in qualifying despite how close we were to a pole position, which made it a weekend of recovery from that point onwards.

"There was nothing we could do to avoid what happened in race one, but then we went a different way on strategy to give us a chance of taking advantage, if possible. Our pace was there to see in the latter stages of the race, and we came close to points in the end, which would have been a solid finish to the weekend."

Bennett is soon back in action at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps when the FIA Formula 2 Championship supports the Belgian Grand Prix over the weekend of 18/19 July.