The 2019 Spa-Francorchamps FIA Formula 2 round was to have been a pair of motor races that were due to be held on 31 August and 1 September 2019 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Stavelot, Belgium as part of the FIA Formula 2 Championship. It was to be the ninth round of the 2019 FIA Formula 2 Championship and run in support of the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix.
The feature race was abandoned after an accident involving Anthoine Hubert, Juan Manuel Correa and Giuliano Alesi. Hubert and Correa were taken to the circuit's medical centre where Hubert died of his injuries. Correa was stabilised and transferred to a nearby hospital. The sprint race was cancelled as a mark of respect.
Report
Championship standings before the round
ART Grand Prix driver Nyck de Vries entered the round with a thirty point lead over Nicholas Latifi in the drivers' championship. Sérgio Sette Câmara was third, a further twenty-five points behind. In the teams' championship, DAMS started the round with a sixty-five point lead over UNI-Virtuosi Racing, and ART Grand Prix a further thirty-six points behind in third.
Driver changes
Twenty drivers representing ten teams were entered into the event. Nineteen of the drivers who contested the previous round in Hungary returned for the Spa-Francorchamps round. The only exception was Campos Racing driver Arjun Maini, who left the team. Campos signed Euroformula Open championship leader Marino Sato to replace Maini prior to the round.
Qualifying
Nyck de Vries qualified on pole position, his third of the season. Sérgio Sette Câmara was second, a quarter of a second behind de Vries, but de Vries' championship rival Nicholas Latifi was only able to qualify in eleventh when a red flag interrupted his final flying lap. Latifi was later promoted to tenth on the grid by way of a three-place penalty awarded to Jordan King for ignoring yellow flags.
Feature race accident
A sequence of collisions involving multiple cars at the Raidillon corner stopped the feature race in its second lap. Trident driver Giuliano Alesi was running tenth when he spun into the barriers while going through Eau Rouge, damaging the rear of the car and bouncing back onto the circuit at the exit of the corner. Ralph Boschung, Anthoine Hubert and Jordan King had been running eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth at the time and took evasive action. Boschung cleared Alesi's Trident by taking to the tarmac run-off on the outside of the corner and King was able to slow in time to avoid contact. Hubert attempted to go to the right of Boschung, but made contact with the Trident's right-rear wheel, puncturing Boschung's tyre and causing Hubert to lose his front wing. Hubert's car continued along the run-off and crashed into a tyre barrier with the front and right side of the car. The car snapped around and was sitting at an angle that was perpendicular to the racing line, but it remained on the tarmac run-off area.
Juan Manuel Correa, who had been fourteenth at the time, was on the approach to Eau Rouge as Alesi lost control. He hit a piece of debris which lodged under a front wheel, preventing his car from steering effectively and causing it to go straight into the tarmac run-off. Correa hit Hubert at right angles, his Charouz hitting Hubert's BWT Arden in the left side of the car. Correa was estimated to be travelling at at the time of the impact. The force of the collision was enough to tear Hubert's car in half, his headrest being ejected in the process. The front assembly of Correa's car broke away, exposing his feet; Correa's car also rolled over. Hubert's Arden pivoted around and hit the tyre barrier again, and came to a rest with its front wing and rear assembly up against the barriers while Correa's Charouz continued travelling several metres further along the circuit and came to rest upside-down on the grassy verge on the opposite side of the circuit. Campos driver Marino Sato braked to a complete stop to avoid cars on track, but in so doing stalled his engine and could not continue. Alesi was similarly unharmed—the accident unfolded behind him as he continued onto the Kemmel Straight—but his contact with the wall meant that his car suffered from race-ending damage and he pulled over on the approach to Les Combes. An FIA investigation into the accident found that fifteen seconds had elapsed between Alesi's initial loss of control and the cars of Hubert and Correa coming to a halt.