Salisbury Racer Suffers Tricky Weekend at Monaco

Salisbury racing star John Bennett returned to Europe for the first time in his 2026 FIA Formula 2 Championship campaign this past weekend (05-07 June).

He was battling it out for honours around the famous streets of Monte Carlo in front of huge crowds.

Bennett entered in high spirits, following a strong performance in the most recent meeting in Montreal. The former GB3 vice champion was consistently running in the top five in the two races in Canada; however, on both occasions, his tremendous pace was cruelly cut short by contact that was later deemed another’s responsibility by the stewards.

The Trident team driver hoped to take that form into the latest two races at the Principality. He impressed in free practice, challenging the experienced names in the top ten, a performance that gave him optimism ahead of a crucial qualifying session on Friday.

While pushing the car to the limit around the tricky street circuit, Bennett was initially lying fourth on the timesheets with the prospect of a great weekend ahead. Fate dealt him a blow again, though, when he hit the crash barrier at turn six while attempting to improve on his previous lap. As a result, he had his best time deleted, meaning he faced an uphill battle from the last row of the grid for the races.

Overtaking proved tricky - as expected in Monaco - in the 30-lap sprint race on Saturday afternoon, as Bennett chased a long pack of cars held up behind 10th-placed Nikola Tsolov. Opportunities for a lunge were sparse, but the Brit kept his nose clean to finish two spots better off in 20th.

A longer 42-lap feature race took place on Sunday morning, with a mixture of pitstop and tyre strategies now coming into play. A switch to supersoft tyres at mid-distance resulted in Bennett lighting up the timesheets with two consecutive fastest laps of the race. In the end, his quickest lap was only bettered by the top three finishers, further showing his raw speed en route to 18th at the chequered flag.

John Bennett: "It wasn't the weekend we would have wanted, for sure. It all comes back to qualifying, unfortunately. Our pace was good just before that in practice, so we were looking to just go out and find those extra bits on fresh tyres in our session to get ourselves up the grid and avoid being stuck in traffic. Sadly, we ended up in the wall, which meant it was always going to be a battle to recover from there without a safety car or some carnage in front of us. Definitely not a representative weekend for us as a team, but Barcelona is a totally different circuit, so we're keen to get back up to where we were in Canada."

Bennett is straight back into action this weekend (12-14 June) as the F2 field heads to Barcelona for two more races alongside the F1 Spanish Grand Prix.