Nikola Tsolov won the Formula 2 Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, his fourth victory of the 2026 season and the one that has turned the championship into a genuine two-horse race. The 19-year-old Campos Racing driver finished ahead of his title rival, Italy's Gabriele Mini, and now trails him by just two points with eight rounds still to run.
That is worth pausing on. Formula 2 is the last rung below Formula 1, the final proving ground before a seat on the grid, and a Bulgarian is currently within touching distance of winning it. The Bulgarian national anthem played at the podium afterwards, a sound this country's motorsport followers have had very little practice hearing.
Image original By Michael - Sent directly by the creator, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=186682399
How the race was won
Tsolov started third and made the front of the field his business early. After Sebastian Montoya and Rafael Villagomez collided at Turn 2 and brought out the safety car, racing resumed on lap four, and the Bulgarian quickly passed Alex Dunn and then his own Campos teammate Noel Leon to lead the opening laps.
The race, though, was won in the pit lane. Campos pulled Tsolov in early, on lap eight, and a slow tyre change dropped him to 14th. It looked like a disaster and turned out to be the plan. While the cars ahead stayed out on worn rubber, Tsolov's fresh tyres came good and he carved his way back, the classic undercut working exactly as the team had drawn it up.
For several laps the picture on the timing screens was misleading. Tsolov, Mini and Dunn were effectively scrapping for the lead while officially running outside the top places, because the cars technically ahead had not yet taken their mandatory stops. There was a scare in the middle of it: in one of several wheel-to-wheel exchanges with Mini, contact broke a piece off Tsolov's front wing, with the Italian driving over the debris, but his pace held and Campos left him out without repairs. On lap 24 he pressured Dunn into a mistake and made the decisive pass, and as the remaining leaders finally took their mandatory stops, Tsolov inherited the effective lead. A brief virtual safety car on lap 26, after Mari Boya's car caught fire, changed nothing. Once the stops cycled through he led Mini by around two seconds, stretched it to nearly three, and came home unchallenged after 40 laps. Mini took second, Oliver Goethe third for MP Motorsport, and Rafael Camara fourth.
Two points, eight weekends, and the maths
The standings now read Mini 108, Tsolov 106, with Camara third on 82 and Dunn fourth on 78. Six of the season's fourteen race weekends are done, which leaves eight, and a two-point gap across eight weekends is, in practical terms, no gap at all. One feature-race result either way and the lead changes hands.
This was Tsolov's third feature win of the campaign, on top of earlier victories in Australia and Monaco and a sprint win in Miami. For a driver still in his teens, leading or near-leading a championship that feeds directly into Formula 1 is the kind of season that gets a young racer noticed by the teams above.
Next stop, Silverstone
Here is the part that should interest anyone reading this from Bulgaria with one eye still on home. The next round is at Silverstone, England, on 4 and 5 July, run as it always is on the British Grand Prix weekend. The Tsolov against Mini title fight, in other words, is about to land on British soil, at a far friendlier hour than the fly-away rounds in Australia and Miami.
For British expats who grew up with the British Grand Prix as a fixture of the summer, there is a neat overlap this year: the most compelling story on the support bill is a Bulgarian. Whether you catch it at the circuit or on the race-weekend coverage, the standings mean Silverstone could be the weekend the championship lead actually changes hands.
Tsolov did not put a foot wrong in Austria. Eight weekends remain to find out whether he can keep it up.