Norman Nato claimed his first victory of the 2017 Formula 2 season with a win on the streets of Baku in Sunday's Sprint Race, despite crossing the line second, as a time penalty for Charles Leclerc dropped the Monegasque racer to second.
Nato took over up front after an early gearbox failure for initial race leader Oliver Rowland, who fought with polesitter Ralph Boschung on the opening lap to claim the advantage, before the DAMS driver came to a halt at the start of lap eight with reliability troubles.
With Nato also passing Boschung earlier on – damaging his front-wing in the process – he took over the lead and remained there for much of the race until with three laps remaining, Leclerc got past the Arden driver.
Leclerc has surged forwards from 10th place with a series of DRS-assisted moves along the main straight, but just moments later a penalty for the Prema racer was confirmed.
A 10-second time penalty was handed down by the stewards after Leclerc failed to slow sufficiently under yellow flags, but with just two laps remaining there was no chance for that to be covered off and Leclerc could only muster a two-second gap to Nato, meaning he dropped to second as he crossed the line first.
DAMS' Nicholas Latifi completed the podium, but was never involved in the fight for the lead as he finished 10 seconds adrift.
Jordan King finished fourth, a second off Latifi, but ahead of Sergey Sirotkin, Artem Markelov, Nobuharu Matsushita, Luca Ghiotto, and Boschung, with Sergio Sette Camara completing the top ten.
Other than Rowland, only one other driver failed to finish the race, as Nyck de Vries retired from second place after going wide at Turn 3.
