Monza F2: Ticktum wins sprint race ahead of Ilott

Dan Ticktum cruised to his second Formula 2 victory of the season in the sprint race at Monza, as Callum Ilott finished second to move clear of Robert Shwartzman in the drivers’ standings.

Having lined up second on the grid courtesy of a seventh-place finish in Saturday’s feature race, Ticktum made a brilliant start to clear polesitter Louis Deletraz on the entry to the first chicane.

After taking the lead, Ticktum slowly but steadily built a gap over his rivals, moving two seconds clear of Deletraz by lap 10 of 21.

Deletraz then fell into the clutches of Virtuosi’s Callum Ilott and ART man Christian Lundgaard, the duo clearing the Charouz driver within two laps of each other to demote him outside the podium positions.

Ilott and Lundgaard however could do little about Ticktum after passing Deletraz, the ex-Red Bull junior expanding his lead to the best part of three seconds.

When MP Motorsport’s Felipe Drugovich stopped at the exit of the first chicane after being pitched into a spin by Williams Formula 1 test driver Roy Nissany, there was a risk that his advantage could be negated by the safety car.

However, the race control chose to deploy only a virtual safety car instead, allowing Ticktum to retain the lead which he held until the chequered flag was dropped at the end of lap 21.

Ilott held on to second, despite Lundgaard closing within half a second of him on the final lap of the race.

Saturday race winner Mick Schumacher jumped up to fourth early on, but locked up heading into the first chicane while defending against Guanyu Zhou, dropping to sixth.

However, he managed to recover the lost positions, overtaking Deletraz two laps from the finish to finish as the top Prema driver in fourth.

Deletraz was eventually classified fifth after successfully fending off the second Prema of Shwartzman on the final tour.

Carlin driver Jehan Daruvala finished in the points for the second race in a row in seventh, ahead of Campos driver Jack Aitken, who completed the points scorers. 

Nikita Mazepin finished ninth for Hitech, while Red Bull junior Juri Vips (DAMS) secured the best finish of his short F2 career in 10th.

Red Bull/Honda protege Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou retired from the race due to unrelated technical problems, joining Drugovich in the list of retirees.

Race results:

Cla#DriverTeamGap
12 Dan Ticktum DAMS 
24 Callum Ilott UNI-Virtuosi 4.600
36 Christian Lundgaard ART Grand Prix 5.200
420 Mick Schumacher Prema Powerteam 6.600
511 Louis Deletraz Charouz Racing System 7.000
621 Robert Shwartzman Prema Powerteam 7.300
78 Jehan Daruvala Carlin 10.900
89 Jack Aitken Campos Racing 16.900
924 Nikita Mazepin HitechGP 18.700
101 Jüri Vips DAMS 19.600
1122 Roy Nissany Trident 30.800
1214 Nobuharu Matsushita MP Motorsport 31.000
1317 Giuliano Alesi HWA AG 32.300
1423 Marino Sato Trident 33.100
1510 Guilherme Samaia Campos Racing 41.700
1625 Luca Ghiotto HitechGP 1’00.000
1716 Artem Markelov HWA AG 
1812 Pedro Piquet Charouz Racing System 
195 Marcus Armstrong ART Grand Prix 
 15 Felipe Drugovich MP Motorsport 
 7 Yuki Tsunoda Carlin 
 3 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi 
View full results


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